The Crash: Did Everyone Fail Mackenzie Shirilla — Including Herself?

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Brueski and Robin Drake.

**Tony Brueski** (0:08)
Everybody's talking about it, and we love you too as well as we go through the conversation on the chats, Substack, YouTube, Facebook, wherever you're watching, way in. And we want to see your opinion. Mackenzie Shirilla, The Crash is what we're talking about. She was 17 when she was charged with four counts of murder for driving her car into a building in Strongsville, Ohio, killing Dominic Russo and Davion Flanagan. Her defense attorney raised the Potts diagnosis at trial, a condition that can cause fainting and loss of consciousness, but never really called any medical experts. So that really didn't weigh all that much on the judge. No jury here. No records, no testimony. After the conviction, a neurologist found evidence consistent with a medical episode. The opinion was submitted in a post-conviction petition filed one day past Ohio's deadline. And that's where a lot of the conversation sits right now on Mackenzie Shirilla and the crash. Joining us to discuss, and we're going to go into three different parts here today, talking about the defense. Did they fail? Mackenzie Shirilla? Also, we're going to look at the prosecution. Was it overreach and what about going forward? Does she have a path to freedom at some point in time? I guess that really is up to her. Bob Motta, defense attorney, host of the podcast Defense Diaries, available wherever you get podcasts and on YouTube with us. And of course, Rob Andreak, retired FBI special agency for the Counterintelligence Behavioral Analysis Program is with us as well.
Bob? T? I'm going to start with you on this. I didn't know a ton about the case until I watched the Netflix doc and then I didn't follow the trial when it was going on. I know you didn't either. I don't think any of us really did.
So I'm catching up, but I feel like I've got a good catch up in the last week or two.
After you watched the doc, after you just saw the surface information of everything that everybody's talking about, and we'll go into everything that's been dug into further in a little bit. We're not just talking surface here. What was your reaction to the case?

**Bob Motta** (2:18)
Something like this. Huh.

**Tony Brueski** (2:21)
Yeah.

**Bob Motta** (2:24)
I go into every Netflix documentary knowing that there's going to be gaping holes in what happened during the trial itself. So I knew that, so I'm looking at it from my perspective saying, wow, seems like this defense attorney really shit the bed.
That was the way I walked away from it, and I was walking with Allie, and we were both like we need to cover this because number one, I want to see if I can find the trial, which I have not been able to find by the way online. People in my chat were saying the court TV because it was a bench trial, meaning the jury, and it was short. It was a couple of days, I think. Yeah. I desperately looked around for it. I couldn't find it if anybody in chat is aware of where it might be. I know that they aired victim impact panels or the victim impact statements. I think they have the sentencing, but as far as the entire trial being somewhere, I'm not aware of it and I really like to watch it because, like I said, there's just a lot of gaping holes which we're going to talk about today.

**Tony Brueski** (3:33)
Yeah. Let's start with, because I want to talk about the defense in this segment and how they served her, did not serve her.
One of the big things that people are talking about after the fact from the documentary, the defense attorney raising the Potts diagnosis, but almost somewhat passively, if you will, of like, well, if you don't think it's that, maybe it's this. It's kind of how it feels like. The Potts diagnosis is essentially kind of a blood pressure issue where you stand up, you don't see things for a moment, you could black out. It happens a lot at that sort of age, but it can go on into adulthood and be a full-fledged diagnosis and condition.
A lot of people have said, I don't think that really applies. There's an expert that says it does, but that expert never also got a chance to take the stand in this. Let's talk about that. The arguments for this being a medical emergency, whether it be Potts or whether it be something else that could have been going on here, in your opinion, as a defense attorney, how was that handled at trial? Was that adequately shown to the judge as a viable explanation? Could it have been shown to the judge as a viable explanation or is it kind of a reach no matter how you look at it?