Appeal Denied: The surprising reason the Ohio Supr...

Appeal Denied: The surprising reason the Ohio Supreme Court rejected Mackenzie Shirilla’s challenge to her murd3r conviction

The state’s Supreme Court upheld an appeals court decision to deny the request for a new trial in March, noting Shirilla’s lawyers filed the appeal one day late.

Mackenzie Shirilla in ‘The Crash’.Credit: Netflix

The Ohio Supreme Court has denied Mackenzie Shirilla’s appeal for a new trial, after she was convicted of murder in 2023.

The ruling handed down on Tuesday affirmed the judgment of a May 2025 hearing presided over by Cuyahoga County judge Nancy Margaret Russo, the same judge who found Shirilla guilty of murdering her boyfriend, Dominic Russo (no relation) and their friend, Davion Flanagan, in a 2022 car crash. Shirilla’s lawyers took that judgment to the Eighth District Court of Appeals, which upheld Russo’s decision, as the Supreme Court did again on Tuesday.

The single-line ruling from the Supreme Court read: “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).”

Dominic Russo and Mackenzie Shirilla, as pictured in ‘The Crash’.Courtesy of Netflix

Judge Anita Laster Mays, who presided over the appeals court hearing on the Shirilla case, offered deeper insight into Russo’s initial judgment in denying the petition for post-conviction relief in her journal entry and opinion.

The appeals court first affirmed Shirilla’s convictions on direct appeal, with trial transcripts being filed on Oct. 23, 2023. In Ohio, defendants are given 365 days to challenge their conviction after such transcripts are filed. But according to Mays, “Shirilla filed a petition for postconviction relief… on Oct. 24, 2023. The trial court dismissed the petition as time-barred on May 1, 2025, concluding it was filed one day past the 365-day jurisdictional deadline.”

According to court records, Shirilla’s defense team argued that because 2024 was a leap year, the single-day delay in filing should not be considered erroneous. Neither the appeals court nor the state’s Supreme Court agreed.

Entertainment Weekly has reached out to Shirilla’s attorneys for comment.

Shirilla’s relationships with Russo and Flanagan, the crash that took their lives, and the resulting trial that concluded with Shirilla’s conviction are all chronicled in The Crash, which premiered on Netflix on May 15.

On July 31, 2022, Shirilla, then 17, drove her car into a brick wall at nearly 100 mph. Passengers Russo and Flanagan were pronounced dead at the scene, while Shirilla survived after sustaining several injuries.

During the trial, prosecutors were able to produce evidence such as surveillance videos, vehicle “black box” data, and witness testimony that Shirilla intentionally caused the crash. She was ultimately sentenced to life in prison with an eligibility for parole after 15 years served.