Ohio Supreme Court Rejects Mackenzie Shirilla Appeal Over 1-Day Filing Miss

Q: If her case were in a different Ohio county, could a legal loophole have saved her last chance at an appeal?

Yes — potentially, because Ohio’s appellate districts are split on what starts the 365-day clock for a postconviction petition. In Shirilla’s case, the Eighth District, which covers Cuyahoga County, used a narrow reading of “trial transcript.” It counted only the transcript from the actual murder trial, filed Oct. 24, 2023. That made her Oct. 24, 2024 petition one day late in a leap year and therefore jurisdictionally barred. But other Ohio appellate districts have adopted a broader interpretation. The First, Second and Seventh districts have said the deadline can run from the filing of all transcripts objectively necessary for the direct appeal, not just the trial transcript in the strict sense. Shirilla’s lawyers argued that would include the juvenile bindover transcript, which was filed later, on Dec. 15, 2023. Under that approach, her Oct. 24, 2024 filing likely would have been timely. So the “loophole” was not a special county rule, but a real conflict among Ohio appellate courts. If her case had arisen in a county within one of the districts using the broader interpretation, she may have cleared the deadline and at least won review of her ineffective-counsel claim tied to her POTS defense. What ended that possibility for Shirilla was geography and discretion: her case was in the Eighth District, and the Ohio Supreme Court declined to step in and resolve the split in her favor.

3 articles · Updated · Fox News · Jun 28

June 23's order left intact a lower-court ruling that threw out Mackenzie Shirilla's postconviction petition because it was filed on day 366, one day past Ohio's 365-day limit.
Her lawyers had asked the court to review claims that trial counsel failed to investigate POTS and seek expert testimony on whether the condition caused her to lose consciousness before the 2022 crash.
Ohio appellate judges had already rejected Shirilla's arguments that the deadline should run from later-filed juvenile bindover transcripts or be extended by the 2024 leap year, calling the filing deadline jurisdictional.
Shirilla, now 21, is serving concurrent 15-years-to-life sentences after being convicted of murdering Dominic Russo, 20, and Davion Flanagan, 19, in a 2022 crash prosecutors said was intentional.