The Ohio Supreme Court has rejected a bid by Mackenzie Shirilla's lawyers to reconsider its earlier refusal to hear her appeal, dealing another legal blow to the convicted double murderer. Shirilla, now 21, is serving two concurrent sentences of 15 years to life for deliberately driving her car into a brick building in Strongsville, Ohio, in 2022, killing her boyfriend Dominic Russo, 20, and their friend Davion Flanagan, 19. The decision keeps intact a lower-court finding that her post-conviction appeal, which raised claims of ineffective legal representation, was filed a day late, meaning its substantive arguments have never been examined.

Chief Justice Sharon Kennedy issued the denial, leaving standing an appellate ruling that Shirilla's petition, filed on 24 October 2024, missed the 365-day deadline by one day due to a dispute over how the clock should have started and confusion linked to the 2024 leap year. Her lawyers had argued her trial counsel failed to properly investigate evidence that she suffered from Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS), which they claim could have caused her to lose consciousness and fail to brake, though courts have so far only ruled on the timing issue. Shirilla was convicted in 2023 following a bench trial, with prosecutors citing evidence including surveillance footage, vehicle data and a speed of nearly 100mph at impact; her case has drawn renewed attention following Netflix's documentary "The Crash".