The Supreme Court of Ohio will not hear the appeal filed by Mackenzie Shirilla, convicted of murder. In March 2023, she was found guilty of causing a car accident that claimed the lives of her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, and another friend, Davion Flanagan.
In a one-line decision issued on Tuesday, the Supreme Court stated: “Upon consideration of the jurisdictional memoranda filed in this case, the court declines to accept jurisdiction of the appeal pursuant to Rule 7.08(B)(4).”
It means that the ruling made by Judge Nancy Margaret Russo in Cuyahoga County, where Shirilla was convicted of murdering Russo, her boyfriend, and their friend Flanagan in the 2022 car accident, stands.
After Shirilla’s lawyer appealed Judge Russo’s decision in the Eighth District Court of Appeals, the court ruled in favor of Judge Nancy Margaret Russo (and her daughter was not related to him in any way). On Tuesday, the Ohio Supreme Court made the same ruling.
The court confirmed its decision in Shirilla’s case in May 2025 when the appeals court upheld Shirilla’s convictions on direct appeal. Trial transcripts were filed on October 23, 2023. In Ohio, a defendant is entitled to file a petition for post-conviction relief within 365 days after the filing of the transcript.
Anita Laster Mays, the presiding judge of the appeals court hearing in Shirilla’s case, clarified the time frame in her journal entry and her opinion, rejecting the petition for post-conviction relief. According to her, “the trial court dismissed the petition as time-barred on May 1, 2025, saying it was filed one day after the 365-day deadline”.
The records show that Shirilla’s lawyer argued that because 2024 was a leap year, a one-day delay should be considered an error. Neither the appeals court nor the state Supreme Court agreed.
According to court documents, on July 31, 2022, Shirilla, at the age of 17, crashed her car into a brick wall, driving almost 100 miles per hour. Both passengers, Russo and Flanagan, died in the accident, whereas Shirilla managed to survive but sustained serious injuries.
Prosecutors used surveillance video, black box data, and witness testimony proving that Shirilla caused the crash intentionally during the trial. She received a life sentence with the possibility of parole after 15 years.
The story of Shirilla’s relationships with Russo and Flanagan, the fatal accident, and the criminal trial was shown in the documentary The Crash, which premiered on Netflix on May 15th.
