Mackenzie Shirilla's appeal rejected by court after 'The Crash' revives ‘Hell on Wheels’ case
Mackenzie Shirilla’s bid to get Ohio’s highest court to review her latest appeal has crashed.
The Ohio Supreme Court declined to accept jurisdiction in Shirilla’s case, leaving intact a lower-court ruling that tossed her postconviction petition because it was filed one day too late.
In an entry filed June 23, the court said it had reviewed the jurisdictional filings but would not take the case. The order was signed by Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy.
Shirilla's case is back in the limelight after Netflix's new series, "The Crash."
Shirilla, now 21, is serving two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life in prison for killing her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, 20, and their friend, Davion Flanagan, 19, after prosecutors said she deliberately slammed her Toyota Camry into a brick building in Strongsville, Ohio, on July 31, 2022.
She was later convicted after a bench trial of four counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault and two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide.
Prosecutors argued at trial that Shirilla drove into the building to end her toxic relationship with Russo, and that Flanagan was an unintended victim who happened to be in the car.
Shirilla has maintained the crash was not intentional. Fox News Digital has reached out to her attorneys for comment.
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Since the docuseries, Shirilla’s lawyers filed an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court, arguing that her trial lawyers failed to adequately investigate evidence that she suffered from Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome, or POTS. The syndrome, they say, could have caused her to lose consciousness before the crash.
The defense says the condition was only "cursorily referenced" at trial despite Shirilla and her family allegedly putting her attorneys on notice about it. Her lawyers argued trial counsel should have dug deeper and sought expert testimony to explain whether POTS could account for Shirilla’s failure to brake before impact.
Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley "believes without question that Mackenzie Shirilla is guilty of murder," his office said in a May 27 statement.
Her convictions were already upheld on direct appeal in 2024, but the appeals court found Shirilla missed the statutory deadline.
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Under Ohio law, a postconviction petition must generally be filed within 365 days after the trial transcript is filed in the court of appeals. The court said the relevant transcript was filed Oct. 24, 2023, making the deadline Oct. 23, 2024. Shirilla filed on Oct. 24, 2024, the 366th day.
Shirilla argued the clock should have started later, when juvenile bindover transcripts were filed, and also pointed to the 2024 leap year. The appellate court rejected both arguments, finding that the statute refers to the "trial transcript," not supplemental juvenile-hearing transcripts, and that the law says 365 days, not a calendar year.
The court also refused to excuse the late filing on fairness grounds, saying the deadline is jurisdictional and Shirilla had not met any statutory exception.