Attorney following Sarah Boone case says defendants are taking the stand more often

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Published  October 23, 2024 7:05pm EDT
FOX 35 Orlando
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Suitcase murder trial could go to jury on Friday

The trial of Sarah Boone, accused of zipping her boyfriend Jorge Torres into a suitcase and leaving him to die, could be in the hands of the jury by the end of the week.

ORANGE COUNTY - Sarah Boone has been speaking in her defense, taking the stand during her second-degree murder trial. She is accused of killing her boyfriend by leaving him trapped in a suitcase. 

Boone said she lied to investigators when she told them her boyfriend had died by accident. She now said she was acting in self-defense.

An attorney following Boone’s case, Lauren Cadilac, said that change was striking. Namely because of these videos presented in the trial, allegedly showing Boone taunting her boyfriend Jorge Torres after trapping him in a suitcase:

"Then a defense attorney's job is no longer necessarily defending her, but maybe mitigating the damage," said Cadilac. "That's why I was shocked - I mean, shocked out of my mind - that she didn't take that plea deal."

In the videos, Torres can be heard from inside the suitcase saying, "I can’t breathe, babe."

"That’s what I feel like when you cheat on me," Boone responds. 

"I think it would have been a better play to come in and say, ‘Yes, I put him in the suitcase, but I was drunk out of my gourd, and I totally forgot. I never intentionally did anything,’" said Cadilac. 

That was Boone’s original defense, which lasted four years, and through eight other attorneys. However, now she says she was a battered spouse acting in self-defense.

"I lied to the police and basically everyone, because I was extremely fearful of being arrested," she said on the stand Tuesday. 

The battered spouse argument is what’s called an affirmative defense. The defendant basically says, "Yes I did it, but I was within my right to do so."

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So now, rather than the prosecution trying to prove a murder, Boone is trying to prove she was protecting herself.

And Boone’s change in strategy opened the door for the prosecution to bring up other alleged lies.

"You agree you would go to the hospital and tell them things that were not true, correct?" pressed Assistant State Attorney William Jay Tuesday during the trial. 

"Yes," Boone answered. 

So why take the stand, and take the risk that goes with it?

"There is a direct link between narcissism and insisting on taking the stand," said Cadilac. "Defendants believe that they're so smart, and they're so charismatic that they'll be able to change the view of the jury."

She also thinks it could come down to how the jury reads Boone's body language. 

"Another reason, maybe, Mr. Owens doesn't do that is because he can't get any emotion out of his client like she has not shed a single tear since 2020. If you told me my boyfriend of multiple years had passed away, my eyes would be so puffy you wouldn't maybe recognize me."

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