Prosecuting Mackenzie Shirilla's Parents... Is there a case?

Added: 2026-05-28

[00:00:00]In this video, I'm going to talk about McKenzie Sharilla, the woman, young woman who drove 100 miles an hour into a brick wall, killing her boyfriend Dom and her friend DaVon. This happened several years ago.

[00:00:16]But all of a sudden, everyone's talking about it because of Netflix. And people aren't just talking about McKenzie.

[00:00:22]They are talking about her parents.

[00:00:25]and they want her parents criminally prosecuted for what happened here. I'm Vinnie Pallet and I'll tell you exactly what they can and cannot do when it comes to prosecuting McKenzie's parents.

[00:00:41]This is Vinnie After Dark.

[00:00:52]When it's obvious who committed the crime so many times through the years on Court TV, I have seen people look for someone else to blame.

[00:01:04]Not because the person who obviously did it did it, but they want to include someone else in the criminal liability.

[00:01:13]It happens time and time again. I've seen it so often. Happens a lot when kids commit crimes. When kids commit crimes, it's all right. The the kid did it. They didn't get away with it. But who's really to blame for what happened?

[00:01:29]And this is the conversation that we have in all of these stories, these cases, and these investigations. And now prosecutors themselves are having these conversations. We've seen it in the school shooting cases.

[00:01:43]I mean, just recently, we did a case involving the the first grader who came to school and unloaded his weapon on his teacher. Now, the six-year-old can't be held criminally responsible. Can't even be found as a juvenile delinquent. He's too young. So, they went after the mother, and the mother pleaded guilty, went to prison. Now, in that case, it's obvious the parent didn't do the job by not keeping the weapon away from a six-year-old.

[00:02:14]Right. So, they're they're the parents actually doing something by not securing the weapon. I get that. I get it. Right.

[00:02:24]Um the Oxford school shooter, that was a case um he was a teenager. He knew what he was doing. Um had some issues.

[00:02:34]Parents were aware that he had some issues, but they still purchased a weapon for him for Christmas. And then the morning that he went after his classmates and teachers inside that school, there was a meeting that morning because teachers were alarmed that he was drawing certain things and the parents didn't take any action to remove him from the school, to check his backpack, to talk about the fact that he did in fact have access to a weapon at home. So none of that was done. And in that case, prosecutors went after the parents, mom and dad, and they were convicted.

[00:03:14]I looked at the same scenario and said, "Well, what about the the the teachers and the administrators at the school?"

[00:03:19]Like, the teachers did what they were supposed to do. They saw something, they said something, reported it to the administrators who didn't search the backpack, didn't send him home, allowed him to return to school that day, to class that day.

[00:03:38]and um and and many of us are wondering well if the parents were responsible wasn't the school as well but they they never faced any charges.

[00:03:48]So where does that line where do we draw that line? And and when do we go from okay, we know who's responsible for the crime, but what about someone else? They could have done something, they should have done something. How do we hold them responsible as well?

[00:04:09]And everyone's talking about McKenzie Sharilla and her parents. And why are we all talking about it? We're all talking about it because they decided to do a Netflix documentary.

[00:04:21]Trust me, if you go back in the time when this case happened and we covered it on Court TV, it's a big story, but nobody was jumping up and down.

[00:04:31]Nobody was jumping up and down. Like, it happened. She was awful. She got sentenced and it was over.

[00:04:39]And then all of a sudden, they decide to do the documentary. It's like reopening wounds.

[00:04:46]But they did more than that. They exposed themselves. And now there is an obsession with McKenzie Sharilla's mother and father.

[00:04:56]And we're we're looking at them saying, "Well, man, they're bad parents, man.

[00:05:02]They're responsible." Well, let's look at the facts, right? So Mackenzie Sharilla is 17 years old.

[00:05:09]She's not six. They're not giving a car to someone who isn't old enough to drive a car. Now I want to focus on there's two ways to look at this. There's the parenting human ethical aspect of it and then there's taking away someone's liberty in our criminal system of justice. These are two different things.

[00:05:31]Um you can have an opinion about both, but what I'm going to talk about is the law and and finding someone criminally responsible. And it's kind of like the same conversation we had when we talked about Maline Sodto, that poor little girl who was abused by her mother's boyfriend over the course of years under their roof of their house.

[00:05:57]The mother, Jen Sodto, sent her daughter, 13 years old, and this wasn't the first time, but sent her 13-year-old daughter upstairs to go to bed with her boyfriend because she wanted some peace in her bed. go upstairs with Stefan. She she sent her daughter up there and that's where it all happened.

[00:06:20]The abuse, but then the death of Maline Sodto and Stephan Sterns was held responsible. He was obviously responsible for all of it. He documented it. All the abuse he documented over the course of years and then all the forensic evidence led led to the body led to him and he pleaded guilty to all of it to avoid the death penalty.

[00:06:42]But throughout that case, we talked about Jen Sodto, her responsibility.

[00:06:46]What about her? And we had those conversations. And I and I said, "You've got to make a connection.

[00:06:53]There's got to be a connection between Jen Sodto and the conduct." And and the best way to have held her criminally responsible would have been some communication between her and Stephan Sterns where she acknowledges knowing what he's been doing to her for years since she was seven or eight years old until she died after her 13th birthday party.

[00:07:24]But there was nothing there. There was no communication.

[00:07:27]There was absolute stupidity, ignorance, maybe willful ignorance, I don't know.

[00:07:37]But you have to you have to get into her mind. She has to knowingly allow that to happen or knowingly or be involved in in in her own daughter's death or her own daughter's abuse.

[00:07:52]And the closest we came in that case was when she acknowledged that she was scared of a Woody Allen situation where her daughter would end up with her boyfriend and her boyfriend would end up with her daughter and would leave her.

[00:08:15]That's weird. That's really weird. she had that suspicion, but there was no evidence that she had actual knowledge that that that type of abuse was taking place. And as a result, prosecutors, you're handcuffed. You can't you can't prosecute someone. You you need that evidence.

[00:08:33]Like you can say, "She shouldn't have sent her upstairs. She should have known."

[00:08:39]But did she actually know?

[00:08:42]And one thing that we learned is that Alan Sodto, I don't think she talked about it to anyone.

[00:08:53]And and that's because maybe for her the the it had happened so over such a long period of time that it was like her normal.

[00:09:03]So let's get back to McKenzie Sharilla now. Okay. And I've got the law here. I want to go through the law. Okay. Um, when you're talking about going after someone's parent for their conduct, generally speaking, in American juristprudence, our law, we don't like vicarious liability. It doesn't exist.

[00:09:26]It's not like you can't hold person A responsible for something that person B does.

[00:09:34]Okay? You hold person A responsible for what they actually did. So in many of these cases, there has to be some conduct by the parent that leads to or contributes to the child's criminal conduct like providing the weapon, like having some level of actual knowledge and not doing anything and helping create a dangerous situation through your criminal recklessness, your reckless disregard for the danger that you know exists.

[00:10:22]So again, in those in the school cases, it's it's always involves the weapon.

[00:10:26]Well, here the weapon is a car.

[00:10:29]She's 17 years old. She's driving a car.

[00:10:32]You can't hold someone responsible for providing a car to them unless you had a situation where you knew you knew that she had plans to do this or you you're you're giving a car to someone who doesn't have a license some and you're telling them to drive. I mean there's like a recklessness a level of actually doing something providing the car to someone who otherwise wouldn't have access to it.

[00:11:05]But that's not the case here with Mackenzie Sharilla.

[00:11:10]She drove 100 miles an hour into a wall, but just before that, she's just making a normal right-hand turn. Her conduct clearly from my perspective is connected to her relationship with Dom and what's happening in that moment in that car.

[00:11:27]What she is saying, what they're discussing, and what what set her off in that moment.

[00:11:36]or in the alternative, she had planned it all along but had not said anything.

[00:11:42]And here's the the real problem in trying to hold the parents criminally responsible. I'm not talking about ethical. I'm not talking about good parents, bad parents, parents who are oblivious, have no self-awareness of of of what they're doing or what their children are doing or if your kid's a good kid.

[00:12:02]Like, it's not about that sort of judgment. That sort of judgment is not part of our of of our criminal codes.

[00:12:11]The conduct we're talking about is actually doing something something that would lead to a foreseeable result.

[00:12:23]So again, let's back it up.

[00:12:27]What was McKenz's plan? If you're going to drive a 100 miles an hour into a brick wall, yeah, you're going to take those two lives, but you're also planning on taking your own.

[00:12:44]The one thing we know about McKenzie Sharella's parents is they love their daughter. They believe in their daughter and they'll do anything for her. They'll say anything for her. If they had any idea that their daughter was going to take or planning to take her own life, would they have allowed that?

[00:13:06]No. I If you're being honest, the answer is no. So there's no knowledge, again in a criminal sense.

[00:13:17]There's no actual knowledge that you could even attempt to prove about the actions she's going to take because if they had any actual knowledge that she planned to do that, they would have done anything and everything to stop her from doing that be because they don't want to lose their daughter.

[00:13:39]Does that make sense? It makes a lot of sense to me.

[00:13:47]So now, is the conduct so reckless? Is there a disregard by allowing drug use or encouraging drug use or not doing anything about it? Is that enough to tie in some sort of criminal responsibility?

[00:14:02]And the answer is no.

[00:14:08]There's a here. Let let me lay out sort of the the standard here. The foreseeable threshold. The prosecution must prove that the child's violent or destructive act was entirely foreseeable to the parent. It cannot be a surprise.

[00:14:27]Was that foreseeable that action?

[00:14:34]like if they if they had any idea of that, would they allow it to happen? And I would say no.

[00:14:42]You know, if she was just acting out against her boyfriend, okay? And and he's the only victim of all of it. That's a different scenario.

[00:14:50]But she she would have been a victim, you would think, in that accident as well, but she survived. You wouldn't expect her to survive that.

[00:15:11]So, what did they know? When did they know it about their daughter? What is clear to me about their perception of their daughter, Mackenzie Sharilla?

[00:15:19]What what what's clear to me is that they had a blind spot.

[00:15:28]They they had an absolute blind spot.

[00:15:31]They believe their daughter was, you know, oh yeah, she smokes a little pot, but she's just a kid, right? That's what they do, right? Like she's not a bad kid. She's not a bad kid. And everything we've seen and heard in the way she's acted and reacted to all of this is the exact opposite of that.

[00:15:52]So, are they guilty of having a blind spot about their daughter? Absolutely.

[00:15:58]Are they guilty of bad judgment in in what they have said both in court and out of court about all of this?

[00:16:08]Absolutely.

[00:16:10]Do they have any civil responsibility?

[00:16:12]Potentially. But I'm not talking about the civil law. I'm not talking about a lawsuit. I'm talking about criminally prosecuting someone. And it just takes more. It takes more. And I know there's this this drum beat right now against the parents that they should be held criminally responsible in some way.

[00:16:32]Isn't there something we can do?

[00:16:36]But there really is no mechanism.

[00:16:40]And and it's because of the entire nature of our our criminal justice system, which is you're you are stripping away people's liberty.

[00:16:49]You're locking them up. And we treat that much differently than suing someone for damages.

[00:16:56]That's why the burden of proof is so high beyond any and all reasonable doubt because it's such a drastic action to lock someone up.

[00:17:09]And here again, we're looking at it. You can't lock people up for the actions of someone else.

[00:17:20]It doesn't work that way. You have to actually do something, have some knowledge. Even in conspiracy cases, you have to there has to be some sort of overt act towards the conspiracy. You can't just come up with a plan. Hey, yeah, we're going to rob the bank and then you don't do anything. Well, that's not a conspiracy because no one has taken an action towards fulfilling the plan.

[00:17:49]And the reason that you need that is we don't have thought crimes. You have to actually do something to be held criminally responsible.

[00:17:58]And and I can't stress this enough that this this is an important part of our system.

[00:18:04]And and I know prosecutors are getting more aggressive in in these lines of of holding others responsible for the actions of children, but here McKenzie Sharilla is being held accountable as an adult. Like she was 17 years old, about to turn 18. She's doing 15 to life. She may never get out. She could try to get parole. We'll see what the temperature is, you know, in the community 15 years from now.

[00:18:36]She's gonna have a tough time.

[00:18:40]So, I think as we watch the documentary and we watch these interviews that they do, we have to take a step back and say, "Yeah, that that was stupid. That doesn't make sense. I don't you're not a good parent." All that's fair game.

[00:18:56]That's all fair game, but that's where the lines the line is drawn when you start talking about indicting someone.

[00:19:06]And prosecutors have to be real careful about that. I mean, there's a lot of power that prosecutors have. Obviously, there's a check check and balance, you know, whether you've got to present it to a grand jury or put it in front of a judge to see if there's enough to take it to trial.

[00:19:21]But if you've just got people being bad parents to a 17-year-old who did a horrible thing and then after it happens, all they do is make themselves look worse and worse without that smoking gun sort of tangible action by either the mother or the father.

[00:19:47]There's nothing there.

[00:19:49]There's nothing there. There's nothing to charge them with. What are you going to charge them with?

[00:20:03]There's nothing. I'm looking I'm looking I'm looking through the statutes.

[00:20:07]There's nothing to charge them with.

[00:20:09]Like child endangerment. What are we talking about?

[00:20:14]What are we talking about? Like there there real bad judgment and and and some of the worst judgment is is what they did afterwards and the way they acted and reacted. And you saw what the judge did to the mother at the sentencing.

[00:20:30]This is embarrassing.

[00:20:34]But I think all that shot right over the mother's head. She didn't realize how ridiculous it was what she was doing and saying inside the courtroom.

[00:20:46]So, I want to take an opportunity to talk about all that.

[00:20:51]It's a terrible case.

[00:20:54]She's a horrible human being. She's a product of the house she grew up in, her set of values, her self-awareness, her ability to understand what she did and what she took away.

[00:21:10]And a lot of that, you know, nature, nurture, some of it's in her nature, some of it's in her genes, some of it's how she grew up, some of it is just who she is.

[00:21:26]We can say and we can argue that, yeah, parents didn't raise her right.

[00:21:32]But you don't get prosecuted for not raising somebody right.

[00:21:38]You get prosecuted for actually doing something criminal, taking that act.

[00:21:46]All right, I'm Vinnie Palletan and again, this is Vinnie after dark. These are the videos I make at the end of the day when I'm a little loopy, a little tired. Um, but I have something to say.

[00:21:59]So, thanks so much. Please like, subscribe, do all that. And, uh, in the meantime, please don't forget to hug the kids.