The Ohio Supreme Court has declined to review the latest appeal of Mackenzie Shirilla, who is serving two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life in prison for killing her boyfriend and their friend in a car crash. The court's decision leaves intact a lower-court ruling that tossed her postconviction petition because it was filed one day too late. The order was signed by Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy. Shirilla's case has garnered attention following a recent docuseries about the incident.
Shirilla, now 21, was convicted of four counts of murder, four counts of felonious assault, and two counts of aggravated vehicular homicide after a bench trial. Prosecutors argued that she deliberately slammed her car into a brick building to end her toxic relationship with her boyfriend, resulting in the deaths of her boyfriend and their friend. Shirilla has maintained that the crash was not intentional, claiming she may have lost consciousness due to a medical condition.
Shirilla's lawyers had filed an appeal with the Ohio Supreme Court, arguing that her trial lawyers failed to adequately investigate evidence of her alleged medical condition, Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS). The defense claimed that this condition could have caused her to lose consciousness before the crash and that her trial lawyers should have dug deeper and sought expert testimony to explain its potential role in the incident.
The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor's office has stated that they believe Shirilla is guilty of murder. Her convictions were previously upheld on direct appeal in 2024, but the appeals court found that she had missed the statutory deadline for filing a postconviction petition. Under Ohio law, such petitions must generally be filed within 365 days after the trial transcript is filed in the court of appeals.
Shirilla had argued that the clock should have started later, when juvenile bindover transcripts were filed, and also pointed to the 2024 leap year. However, the appellate court rejected both arguments, finding that the statute refers to the "trial transcript" and that the law says 365 days, not a calendar year. The court also refused to excuse the late filing on fairness grounds, saying that the deadline is jurisdictional and Shirilla had not met any statutory exception.
