Mackenzie Shirilla, convicted in the 2022 deaths of her boyfriend and his friend, is making a final attempt to have her murder conviction overturned. Her legal team filed a habeas corpus petition on Tuesday, asserting that her Sixth Amendment rights were violated during her 2023 trial.
Shirilla, who is serving two concurrent 15-years-to-life sentences at the Ohio Reformatory for Women, was 17 when she drove her car into a wall at 100 mph in Strongsville, Ohio. The incident resulted in the deaths of her boyfriend, Dominic Russo, 20, and their 19-year-old friend, Davion Flanagan. The judge in her trial had previously described her as "literal hell on wheels."
According to her current attorneys at Marein & Bradley LLC, the medical examiners who conducted the autopsies on Russo and Flanagan did not testify during Shirilla's trial. Instead, a pathologist from the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office testified in their place. Shirilla's lawyers contend that this violates her Sixth Amendment right to confront witnesses.
While Shirilla was a juvenile under state law at the time of the crash, her case was moved to adult court due to probable cause that murder had been committed. Her defense team argues that prosecutors failed to establish this probable cause and did not prove that Shirilla acted recklessly, or with purpose or knowledge.
The defense also criticized Shirilla's original legal team from Friedman, Nemecek, Long & Grant, alluding to a potential medical condition, postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome, which could have caused her to lose consciousness during the crash. Additionally, they claimed texts suggested Russo was the "instigator" of the crash, though further details were not provided. Prosecutors had initially stated that Shirilla intended to murder Russo after their relationship soured.
Shirilla's lawyers also claimed that the ruling to reject a new trial was made in error. The habeas corpus petition was filed on October 24, 2024, one day past the 365-day deadline after the trial transcript was submitted, due to 2024 being a leap year. Cuyahoga County Judge Nancy Margaret Russo, who presided over the non-jury trial, ruled the petition invalid in May 2025, a decision later upheld by the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.
The defense team further asserted that the manner of the two deaths was improperly changed from "accidental" to "homicide." No date has been set for the hearing on the habeas corpus petition.
Shirilla's defense has filed a motion with the Ohio Supreme Court concerning her post-conviction appeal and has also asked the Eighth District Court of Appeals to reopen her appeal case, though no decision has been made on these matters. Shirilla's first parole hearing is scheduled for September 2037. Her case was also the subject of the Netflix documentary "The Crash."