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Mackenzie Shirilla has lost her final attempt to appeal her 2023 double murder conviction at a state level.
The Ohio Supreme Court‘s Chief Justice, Sharon L. Kennedy, declined to reconsider Shirilla’s appeal on Tuesday, September 1, after the court rejected a previous bid from her lawyers in June, per court documents obtained by Us. (Columbus, Ohio’s Fox 8 was the first to report the ruling.)
“It is ordered by the court that the motion for reconsideration in this case is denied,” Chief Justice Kennedy wrote in her ruling.
Us has reached out to Shirilla’s attorneys for comment.
The Netflix true-crime documentary The Crash explored her July 2022 car crash in Strongsville, Ohio, in which Shirilla, now 21, allegedly drove her Toyota Camry into a brick building after accelerating her car to 100 mph. Investigators later discovered that she never pushed the brake before impact.
Shirilla’s two passengers — her on-off boyfriend Dominic Russo and classmate Davion Flanagan — were both pronounced dead at the scene of the crash while she suffered serious injuries. The documentary raised questions over whether Shirilla may have intentionally driven into a wall due to relationship problems with Russo.
Shirilla was convicted during a 2023 bench trial of 12 felony charges, including murder, and ordered to serve two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life imprisonment. Shirilla has always maintained her innocence.
Since her conviction, Shirilla has hired new lawyers and shaped her appeal around a theory that she had a pre-existing medical condition known as Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS) that may have caused her to black out behind the wheel.
Her current legal team has argued that Shirilla’s previous lawyers did not adequately explore a possible medical defense, nor did they secure any expert testimony. They also offered an alternate theory of why Shirilla may have been in the vicinity of the crash site on the night of the deadly incident.
“The prosecution theorized that the location was intended to be private in order for Shirilla to crash the vehicle without immediate attention,” her lawyers wrote in her appeal. “But the defense had evidence that a local grocer had left a package of produce for Shirilla at a 24-hour pickup spot at a store located in the vicinity of the crash scene.”
Mackenzie Shirilla in prison Courtesy Instagram / Mackenzie Shirilla
An appeal filed in 2024 was initially dismissed as untimely since Shirilla filed it on October 24, 2024 — a single day after the statutory one-year deadline expired. Her lawyers argued that there was a mix-up on the calendar since 2024 was a leap year.
Her appeal was eventually denied twice in Cuyahoga County Court and once in the Eighth District Court of Appeals before it finally landed in the Ohio Supreme Court in June. At that time, the Supreme Court upheld the lower courts’ decision to deny consideration.
Shirilla’s legal fight is not over after her legal setback, as Us confirmed on July 29 that her attorneys filed a writ of habeas corpus in federal court, arguing that her rights were violated in her original bench trial because key evidence in her defense was excluded from consideration.
For now, Shirilla remains behind bars at the Ohio Reformatory for Women in Marysville where she continues to serve two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life. She will be eligible for parole in 2037, per state prison records.
