Mackenzie Shirilla has asked the Ohio Supreme Court to review her case after earlier appeals were denied, keeping alive a fight over a 2023 murder conviction tied to a crash that killed Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan.
Shirilla, 20, was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 15 years served. Prosecutors said the crash was intentional, pointing to surveillance video, vehicle black box data and evidence that the car was traveling nearly 100 miles per hour without braking. Her first parole hearing is scheduled for 2037, if the conviction stands.
The latest filing, made by new attorneys on April 27, 2026, asks the high court to take up a dispute that is now procedural rather than factual. Shirilla’s lawyers argue that a post-conviction challenge should count as timely because the filing deadline should have started later, after a separate transcript was filed weeks after the main trial record. They also say her previous lawyers missed the deadline by one day because they failed to account for 2024 being a leap year.
That deadline fight is the core of the case now. Prosecutors say the clock started on Oct. 23, 2023, and that the challenge was filed late on Oct. 24, 2024. The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office has asked the court to throw out the latest appeal and said it is confident that any court reviewing the case will reach the same conclusion.
Shirilla’s conviction in 2023 made her one of the most closely watched defendants in northeast Ohio, in part because prosecutors said the crash was not an accident but a deliberate act. The current filing does not reopen the underlying evidence, but it does seek another path into court, with her lawyers arguing she would have been acquitted if she had received effective assistance of counsel.
The Ohio Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will hear the appeal. If it declines, the late-filing dispute may close the door on another challenge to a case that has already moved from trial proof to appellate procedure. If it takes the case, the justices will be asked to decide whether a one-day mistake should matter more than another review of the conviction itself.
