Will alleged suitcase killer Sarah Boone take the stand in her defense?

ORLANDO, Fla. — The murder trial of accused suitcase killer Sarah Boone got underway in earnest Friday — after 41/2 years of delays and four days spent picking a jury — with Boone under significant pressure to take the stand in her own defense.

That may be the only way Boone can use the “battered spouse syndrome” defense her attorney has been pitching in recent weeks, even though Boone had previously claimed her boyfriend suffocated accidentally in a suitcase during a wine-fueled game of hide-and-seek in their Winter Park apartment. The battered spouse defense requires evidence that Boone killed Jorge Torres Jr. because she feared for her life, and prosecutors say only Boone’s testimony could provide that.

But taking the stand would open Boone up to cross-examination — potentially a daunting prospect given the inconsistencies in her story over time.

The unusual possibility that a murder defendant would testify — rather than take the fifth — seems in keeping with the outrageous details of the crime and the extraordinary nature of Boone’s path to trial, which has involved at least 16 separate delays and nine different attorneys. The second-degree murder case has drawn international attention, and many potential jurors indicated this week that they knew of it.

During Friday’s opening arguments, Boone’s lead attorney, James Owens, began to lay out her new defense strategy, telling jurors Boone justifiably killed her boyfriend, Jorge Torres Jr., in self-defense, and that she used force reasonable under the circumstances that existed between the two of them.

He asked jurors to consider the history of violence between the two, evidence of which he says he will show the jury, including photos taken by law enforcement of injuries inflicted on her by Torres, who had been arrested for battery involving Boone multiple times.

But Assistant State Attorney William Jay told the jury to ask themselves whether these past incidents had anything to do with Torres’ death that February night in 2020. He said Boone had acted with malicious intent to punish Torres, and that he is dead because she decided he deserved it.

He mentioned two videos retrieved by police from Boone’s cellphone. In the first video, she is heard taunting Torres while he begged to be let out of the suitcase because he couldn’t breathe, according to police records. Boone tells Torres, “Yeah, that’s what you do when you choke me,” and “For everything you’ve done to me. F*** you. Stupid.” A second, shorter video shows Torres still in the suitcase, saying Boone’s name.

But Owens said the 11-minute span of time between the recording of the first and second videos is key to understanding what really happened. He said if Boone takes the stand to testify — he said the decision to testify is “up to her” when asked during a courtroom break — she can explain what happened and why.

According to Owens, Torres tended to get violent after consuming a certain amount of alcohol, and the two had been consuming wine that night. He said Boone was using the suitcase as a way to block an attack from Torres.

The theory behind Battered Spouse Syndrome is that a victim of repeat physical abuse suffers psychological damage and may then perceive the possibility of imminent harm differently than a non-battered person.

Earlier in the week, Judge Michael Kraynick told Owens that the defense’s expert witnesses on Battered Spouse Syndrome, Drs. Michael Brannon and Julie Harper, could not be called to testify until the defense establishes that there was an "overt act" on the part of Torres that sparked Boone to act in-self defense.

Jay said the overt act can be established by Boone if she chooses to testify, which would open her to cross-examination from prosecutors. Prosecutors also have their own expert to psychologically evaluate Boone.

The use of Battered Spouse Syndrome to support an argument of self-defense resulted in the July acquittal of Marcia Thompson, of West Palm Beach, on first-degree murder. Thompson faced life in prison for shooting her husband nine times — six in the back — while he lay on the couch in his underwear. Dr. Brannon was an expert that testified at Thompson’s trial.

But Jessica Mishali, lead attorney for Thompson at trial, told The Orlando Sentinel before Boone’s trial that she wouldn’t use the same argument to defend Boone.

She doesn’t think Boone fits the criteria because she went to sleep after leaving Torres in the suitcase and a person can’t defend themselves while asleep. She also said her behavior doesn’t match that of a battered spouse.

“Battered spouses also don’t talk the way she talks,” Mishali said. “Battered spouses are meek and meager, and quiet and passive, and kind of accept and put up with anything and everything, which is why they end up in that situation.”

Prosecutors called 10 witnesses to testify Friday, including Juan Torres, one of Jorge Torres’ younger brothers; Brian Boone, Sarah Boone’s ex-husband, with whom she shares a child; two former neighbors from their apartment complex; an employee from the complex; an employee at the Publix where the two bought wine; and several Orange County Sheriff’s Office employees, including two deputies, a dispatcher and a former crime scene investigator.

Juan Torres told deputies he had spoken to Jorge on the phone just hours before he was zipped into the suitcase. He said he heard Boone yelling in the background about how Jorge would choke her, and that neither sounded drunk. When cross-examined by the defense, he said he didn’t find her statements about Jorge choking her to be surprising but that he hadn’t heard the statements before.

Vincent Battaglia and Brandon Moats, who lived in an adjacent apartment at the time of Torres’ death, said the couple were often drunk and argued daily, which was easy to hear through the residence’s thin walls. Both say they heard a loud noise coming from Boone’s room, which was adjacent to their bedrooms, on the night of Torres’ death.

Moats said it sounded like something was falling down the stairs and mentioned Boone’s staircase shared a wall with their bedrooms.

Jurors also listened to panicked 911 dispatch audio from Boone reporting Torres’ death to police and can hear her following instructions in an attempt to give him CPR. They were also shown body camera footage of deputies responding to the call, in which Boone tells deputies it was an accident and says Torres’ family won’t accept that and will kill her.

Other evidence shown included photographs of the crime scene, some of which show Torres’ body next to the suitcase. The suitcase itself was briefly displayed in the courtroom.

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