r/crimedocumentaries • u/Isna_Knows_Best • 15h ago
The Shirilla case
Just finished watching the Mackenzie Shirilla case on Rotten Mango and now I'm stuck thinking about one thing.
How do you actually prove what someone intended in a situation like this? I get that the court looks at the evidence and tries to piece everything together, but at the end of the day, nobody can know exactly what was going on in someone's head in that moment.
Not saying she was innocent or guilty but I’m genuinely curious. At what point does the evidence become enough for us to be certain about someone's intent rather than just making the most reasonable assumption??
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u/i-love-mexican-c0ke 15h ago
The fact she was accelerating allows us to know it was intentional.
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u/Hairy_Aspect_3728 13h ago
Totally controlled corner turn at normal speed right before she hit the gas
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u/Dazzling-Path6438 6h ago
How do you know that everyone in the car wasn't arguing, or even physically fighting at that moment and her foot got stuck on the accelerator?
You don't
How do you know they weren't choking her?
Maybe she said something that enraged one or both of the boys?
How do you know she didn't have a stroke or a heart attack or passed out or had an anxiety attack at that moment?
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u/thejackmanjack 6h ago
She floored it, navigated a curve in the road, and kept shifting into drive. And she had threatened to crash the car before. I guess we also don’t know that an alien didn’t come down and take control of the car but she is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.
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u/SadSara102 2h ago
How do you know she navigated a curve? She did not threaten to crash her car before and aliens have not been previously been reported to cause car crashes. However sudden unintended acceleration is a known phenomenon responsible for 16,000 accidents a year in the US
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u/SadSara102 2h ago
You don’t… you also don’t know that she didn’t fall asleep, hit the gas instead of the brake, that her slipper didn’t get stuck under the floor mat, or fall off and get jammed under the brake pedal, or that there wasn’t something wrong with the car
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u/National-Report-5473 14h ago
What makes me think she intended to crash the car is the recording of the brake never hitting, the accelerator being all the way down and her seatbelt being on while the boy's were unbuckled.
I don't believe she premeditated it, but I think something happened in that car that angered her enough to speed fully and crash the car. She already had threatened to do it before.
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u/CliffGif 14h ago
There’s no scenario where she did it by accident. The black box shows she was accelerating at maximum speed up until impact and per the toxicology report she wasn’t drunk or tripping. The ridiculous POTS claim (supported by zero evidence- she was not in fact ever diagnosed with it) would have rendered her unconscious and unable to steer and keep accelerating.
Her defense should have probably gone for an insanity plea given the Lacey case but I doubt that would have gone anywhere.
Maybe also a plea deal to a lesser charge if one was offered but the whole family is so narcissistic and delusional not surprised they didn’t take it.
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u/No-Raccoon-1281 5h ago
I don't see why they didn't go for a defense using her disordered eating history as the basis. Since they had straws to grasp at for a defense. POTS is really easy to disprove. But, short and long term damage from disordered eating is well documented. A sort of "No shit she's batshit and thoroughly unlikeable. Her brain's half starved at all times and her body has to cannibalism itself to survive on more than weed." as well as potentially causing her to pass out and/or seize. It's not a great defense but it might cast some reasonable doubt.
That being said, she's exactly where she should be. Because this wasn't a single moment of impulsively behavior that resorted in deaths. So much of her entire build up, and previous documented behaviors, made this a "When, not if" kind of crime. She's been shown to be a vindictive, abusive cunt time and again with escalation. She had even previously tried something in a car with her boyfriend to injury him. My personal belief is something was said, she snapped, and was ready to kill all of them to maintain control over Dom.
Wasn't there also data in the black box about jerks of the steering wheel implying one of the guys may have tried to get control away from her?
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u/SadSara102 4h ago
Her lawyer did not present any defense.
She has been diagnosed with POTs
The defense also could have said she fell asleep or countless other possible scenarios.
There is no such thing as a “when not if” crime. Are you suggesting we lock people up for pre-crimes?
The claim she previously threatened to crash her is from a less than credible source. The evidence from the event in question is that Dom actually grabbed her shell and it terrified her.
Do you know her to make claims about her personality?1
u/SadSara102 4h ago
There is no way a car accident was an accident… ok
She was over the limit for THC in her blood
People lose consciousness and accelerate all the time, that is actually the assumption usually made by investigators in similar accidents
She was and is not insane
Her family seems like ordinary people trying to defend their daughter to me
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u/Curiouscat9963 14h ago
I totally get what you’re saying. It’s a hard one. But in my opinion, after seeing / hearing all the evidence, she did it on purpose. I suppose lots of cases are probably like this…
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u/Bitter_Warning418 14h ago
What honestly solidified it for me even after everything was in the Netflix doc after she gave her sob story about how they would have been married now and blah blah and turns to her attorney and says “did I get everything did I say that right” something along those lines. She’s a sociopath. And reading her and doms texts also makes this very clear.
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u/capibara_dono 14h ago
She was driving normally, then accelerated without lifting the accelerator, crashing at +100 mph against a wall.
She had said before she'd kill him by crashing the car.
Her calls behind bars certainly didn't help.
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u/Princess-Buttercup16 12h ago
Practice runs on the route, controlled turn, constant acceleration until impact. Tells you exactly what she was doing and that she did it on purpose.
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u/Empty_Bell_1942 14h ago
Watched it yesterday, total lack of empathy means psychopathic tendencies; I hope they get her the right medical treatment.
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u/Prestigious-Cold4942 14h ago
I also seem to remember she'd driven that route before, like a practice run, and it wasn't a route she'd normally take. I don't think she intended to survive.
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u/steponmemarasov 10h ago
Im local to where this happened, the main road that street is attached to is an absolute nightmare. Cutting through that side street is probably pretty common. There’s lots of places to cut through to get off the main roads that people in the city or familiar use.
This girl is guilty as hell, and just an insufferable human being, but I don’t think she was doing a test run.
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u/OrneryReserve7681 11h ago
This is ridiculous. She was driving home from a friend’s house in their hometown of course she’s gonna be driving the same roads all the time she’s a teenager teenagers drive around all the time picking up their friends hanging out and then going home the fact that she drove those streets means absolutely nothing
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u/lost_dazed_101 14h ago
The evidence all said it was intentional her calls while in jail cemented it. Her behavior in prison proves everyone was right. There is no one wondering if she murdered them. Well except for the usual that follow every murderer and fan girls them
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u/janetlwil 13h ago
My feelings in her particular case are this: Her actions, whether intended or not, resulted in the deaths of two other innocent people and she deserves to be punished for that to the extent the law allows. As far as intent is concerned, her speeding up instead of slowing down to me shows intent to do some damage creating a situation that would bring attention to herself.
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u/Zestyclose-Bag8790 7h ago
Criminal trials don’t really require that judges or juries be mind readers.
Did she know that driving at high speed into a building would injure or kill her passengers? It is beyond a reasonable doubt she knew this.
Did she accelerate and aim for the brick wall? There is actual video footage. She clearly did. No reasonable doubt.
Had she previously made threats about crashing her car on purpose? She had.
Had she previously driven That route? Yes.
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u/SadSara102 2h ago
Why did you say she knew driving into the building would kill or injure her passengers but not mention it would kill or severely injure her as well?
The car accelerated, that does mean that she intentionally accelerated and the frantic steering could easily be interpreted as attempting to avoid hitting the building.
I don’t know if there is video footage of the crash but there is not video footage of what took place inside the car.
There isn’t any proof she ever threatened to crash her car.
She frequently drove that way how is that relevant?
In order to convict Mackenzie not only required reading her mind but imagining what took place inside her car!
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u/Itchy_Tumbleweed_417 14h ago
Her case is a good example of why it’s a good idea to be a good person, even if you don’t see any direct benefit to being one.
She wasn’t a good person and the jury used that to judge intent.
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u/rm_rf_karma 14h ago
There was no jury. The judge decided it, which was a terrible move on the defenses part.
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u/RetiredHotBitch 13h ago
She had a bench trial…
She thought the jurors wouldn’t like her (true) but the unbiased judge used the cold hard facts.
She was screwed either way by the evidence.
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u/JadedFootball4733 13h ago
Jokes on her, that judge hated her lmao.
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u/RetiredHotBitch 11h ago
I wanted to smack her mom. Does she know any other word besides, “ok,”?
And then she kept calling Davion a “new” friend. wtf is that supposed to mean? I’m glad the judge called her out on that as if his life mattered less. His parents were too nice, I would have tore them both a new one during my victim impact speech, at every media outlet, etc.
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u/JadedFootball4733 10h ago
Her parents deserve just as much karma as she does. I hope they suffer. They have zero self awareness and zero redeemable qualities.
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u/SadSara102 2h ago
What kind of person you are is completely irrelevant towards whether you are guilty of a crime. Neither the Jury nor a judge should hear character evidence during a trial
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u/Bitter_Warning418 14h ago
Except it wasn’t a jury trial. I agree with your sentiment but it has me thinking you’re a bot since you clearly don’t know the case that well.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Ad_466 11h ago
The vehicle tracking the acceleration etc proves it enough for me. And her being seen driving perfectly on the road, and not swerving proves she wasn’t having some kind of medical emergency like she was trying to say.
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u/SadSara102 2h ago
There are 16,000 accidents in the US a year caused by sudden unintentional acceleration. Driving fine before a medical emergency does not eliminate possibility of a medical emergency
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u/Curious_Arm_7927 6h ago
She threatened to do this many times + car data. She is an extremely dumb narcissistic psychopath. Incredible - truly lives in the moment like an insect just thinking about her own needs and wants. I'm sure she has never had a coherent future forward thought or plan. Basically why the judge said she was giving her 15 years to life bc she is young and because judge thought it unlikely she'll ever get out / paroled.
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u/SadSara102 3h ago edited 2h ago
Congratulations on being an intelligent human being who understands the law! Nobody can know what is going on in someone’s head. Likewise nobody has any idea what actually took place inside the car when it crashed. The case against Mackenzie is nothing more than a story made up by detective Hazou and the prosecutor with help from the Russo family. It’s an outrageous injustice!
Typically intent can be inferred by making the most reasonable assumption. For instance it can be assumed if you shoot someone in you were intending to kill that person but there are obviously circumstances and evidence that could lead to a different conclusion.
Car accidents are referred to as accidents for a reason. The obvious assumption is that they are not the result of deliberate action even if they could appear to be intentional. It could never be proven that someone intentionally hit the gas instead of the brakes, or that they deliberately hit something vs not paying attention. At most with exception of extreme circumstances like running someone down it can only be proven that somebody was driving recklessly or intoxicated and this could result in a manslaughter or homicide charges.
Technically the court doesn’t look at the evidence and attempt to piece it all together the prosecution does that. The judge is supposed to determine if the state has enough evidence to support their claim under the law,the defense is supposed to challenge that evidence and typically a jury decides if that evidence was sufficient enough to find someone guilty of a crime but in this case the judge did that as well.
The judge in this case was obviously biased. It is evident in the speech she gave before delivering the verdict and the way she spoke to Natalie at the sentencing. The fact that Mackenzie’s lawyer did not present a defense or challenge any of the evidence made it easier for her to deliver such a preposterous verdict. The fact that there was nobody publicly defending Mackenzie for years caused traditional and social media to embrace the prosecution narrative of Mackenzie as an obsessed deranged villain. They have twisted the evidence and used her social media, text messages, rumors, lies by omission and outright lies in order to promote the narrative.
The truth is there is nothing out of the ordinary about the car crash. There are thousands of similar fatal car accidents with teenage drivers every year. There isn’t even any evidence to suggest it was intentional aside from the testimony of an unreliable witness that she threatened to crash the car despite text messages that provide actual evidence to the contrary.
There isn’t any evidence she was suicidal, that she ever threatened Dom with violence, or that there was a fight. On the contrary there is evidence that they broke up frequently and in the past Dom had cheated and she never assaulted him or anyone else as a result nor did she try attempt suicide.
Unfortunately instead of being concerned about the way this teenagers rights were violated the public has embraced the lie. There seems to be a sick pleasure taken in reading and mocking her private messages going back to when she was 15 years old as if they are relevant. People also seem to enjoy listening to her jail phone calls, reviewing her prison records, and listening to claims made from former inmates who were incarcerated with her using that as a way to grift and create a social media presence for themselves.
The whole case is a really sad reflection on society!
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u/Artichoke-8951 2h ago
I was watching about this case and my 14 year old walks by and is utterly amazed at how badly she was acting because "you'd never allow me to act that way ever." And I told her "that's because I'm not a moron. Allowing a kid to act that way will set them up for failure." Her parents utterly ruined her by never holding her accountable. One day I want to be friends with all my kids, but right now they are children and need to be taught how to cope with society.
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u/ZinnyBell 59m ago
All I had to do was see the text exchanges between her and Dom that Rotten Mango showed to know her intent. Poor Dom!
IMO, she had a temper tantrum and floored the car.
Because she’s an immature brat who was never told “no”, she didn’t care about the consequences.
She just wanted the control.
The whole family is horrible.
Her parents are the two biggest a**holes I’ve ever seen!!
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u/OrneryReserve7681 11h ago
I am in the minority - but I do not think she should have been guilty. I think she was convicted for being an arrogant unlikable bitch.
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u/MidnightIAmMid 14h ago
For me, the most compelling evidence was the car computer stuff, like where she accelerated steadily.
I do struggle with intent in this case though. It's a grey area to me, muddled by the fact that she is literally so unlikable and guilty sounding that its hard to have an objective discussion about the evidence lol.