Sarah Boone trial live: Florida woman takes stand in Suitcase Murder Trial
Sarah Boone is expected to testify on Tuesday in the second-degree murder trial against her. She is charged in the February 2020 death of her boyfriend, Jorge Torres, who was found dead inside a zipped suitcase.
FOX 35 is streaming the trial gavel-to-gavel on FOX Local (available on mobile and on your TV) and on FOX35Orlando.com. You can also watch the court feed in the video player above.
Florida prosecutors rested their case on Tuesday morning. The defense is then expected to begin their case shortly after.
Prosecutors allege that Boone zipped her boyfriend inside a suitcase during a drunken game of hide-and-seek at their Winter Park home, taunted him, and went to bed, leaving him inside to die.
Boone's defense team, which was quickly put together about a month before trial, alleged that Boone's relationship with Torres was fueled by alcohol and abuse, that she suffered from Battered Spouse Syndrome, and that Torres' death was in self-defense.
Experts testified that Torres' body showed signs of blunt force trauma, potentially due to being hit with a baseball bat or being rolled in the suitcase.
"She did this with the malicious intent to punish him, and then she (went upstairs to sleep) and left him to take his final breaths on this Earth alone. How many breaths there were? We don't know," said William Jay, assistant state attorney, Florida's Ninth Judicial Court, during opening statements.
At the center of the case are two short videos found on Sarah Boone's cell phone of Torres in the suitcase repeatedly calling out Sarah's name and telling her that he cannot breathe. In those videos, Sarah Boone appears to taunt Torres.
"The key to this case in that 11 minutes…and what happened in those 11 minutes," said James Owens, Boone's defense attorney, during opening statements.