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The Ohio Supreme Court declined to review an appeal for a new trial for Mackenzie Shirilla, 21, who was convicted of murder for killing her boyfriend and a friend in a 2022 car crash.
Shirilla was convicted in 2023 after prosecutors argued she intentionally drove her car nearly 100 miles per hour without braking into a brick wall in Strongsville when she was 17.
The crash killed her boyfriend Dominic Russo, 20, and their friend Davion Flanagan, 19, who were passengers in the car.
Shirilla was sentenced to life in prison with the eligibility of parole after serving 15 years.
The court refused to take up her latest appeal, which sought to revive a postconviction challenge dismissed by lower courts, ruling the petition was filed too late and the trial court lacked jurisdiction to consider it.
According to Ohio law, defendants are given 365 days to challenge their conviction after trial transcripts are filed. But Shirilla filed her petition for postconviction relief one day late, causing the trial court to dismiss the petition as time-barred.
Shirilla’s lawyers argued that the petition should not be considered untimely because the filing deadline fell during a leap year. Both the lower courts and the state’s Supreme Court disagreed.
One of the victims’ family members said the decision brought little comfort.
“At the end of the day, my brother is still gone. So there’s no relief at all,” Christine Russo, Dominic Russo’s older sister, said on her podcast, “The Big Sister Unhinged.”
The case returned to the spotlight after being the subject of a popular Netflix documentary, “The Crash,” released in May, which examined the fatal crash and Shirilla’s prosecution.
Shirilla has maintained her innocence, saying she does not remember the crash or the events immediately preceding it and denying that the deaths were intentional.
Shirilla’s mother, Natalie Shirilla, said she will continue to fight for her daughter’s release.
“I’m finding that this appellate process is like being stuck in quicksand,” she said in an interview with NewsNation’s Chris Cuomo. “I have no choice but to be guided by hope that somebody somewhere will be able to look at this critically and see in black and white that there was no proof of intent.”
Shirilla is currently serving her sentence at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville.
Add as preferred source on Google Tags Chris Cuomo Davion Flanagan Dominic Russo Mackenzie Shirilla Ohio Supreme Court The CrashCopyright 2026 Nexstar Media Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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