CLEVELAND — The Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals has upheld a previous ruling that denied convicted Strongsville murderer Mackenzie Shirilla’s request for a new trial, affirming that her legal team waited too long to file its supplemental post-conviction relief petition.
Last May, Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Judge Nancy Margaret Russo, the same judge who found Shirilla guilty in a 2023 bench trial of killing her boyfriend Dominic Russo (no relation to the judge) and their friend Davion Flanagan in a crash, sided with the prosecution in calling the petition invalid. Shirilla’s lawyers made the PCR request on Oct. 24, 2024 — just one day after the deadline that was mandated by Ohio law.
“The court finds the state’s position well-taken, to wit: that the defendant’s petition is time-barred as a matter of law, having been filed past the statutory deadline,” Russo wrote in her decision. “As the filing by defendant was untimely, this court is without jurisdiction to consider the merits or arguments of any of the pleadings. Therefore, as the defendant’s petition is statutorily time-barred and filed out of rule, the court denies the petition for post-conviction relief.”…