Sarah Boone has been found guilty of second-degree murder after her boyfriend was found ‘stiff and purple’ in a suitcase.
Boone, 47, from Winter Park, Florida, has been on trial following the death of 42-year-old Jorge Torres in 2020.
During her sentencing, Boone remained emotionless as Judge Kraynick read out the guilty verdict.
Her current defense attorney James Owens said outside the courthouse that Boone was ‘in shock’ and she felt ‘she had a defense’.
State Attorney Andrew Bain said: ‘This is a very horrific homicide… Today, justice was served with the conviction of Sarah Boone.’
Torres’s family were seen emotional outside of the courtroom and declined to speak with the media.
Boone represented herself for much of her time in court after eight previous attorneys were removed or quit.
After several complaints about her representation Boone drew her own for an attorney, reading ‘Inmate seeks Attorney’. She wrote on the hand-drawn ad: ‘Looking for a prosperous challenge? Ready for your close-up on nat’l television? Are you zealous with a side of keen?’
‘Show the WORLD who you are with your original creativity, extraordinary expertise, confident ingenuity,’ the ad continued and finished with the words ‘epic opportunity awaits’ and ‘invest in the oppressed’.
Before the trial, she had rejected a plea deal for 15 years in prison for manslaughter. She had also made an audacious request, which was denied, for professional hair and makeup while she stood trial.
Boone had claimed that the couple had been playing a drunken game of hide and seek in which Torres willingly got into the suitcase.
Prosecutors argued that she showed no regard for Torres’s life, while she was defended on grounds that she was the victim of battered spouse syndrome.
On Tuesday, she testified: ‘I looked over and saw him settling into the suitcase. I zipped him up. We thought it was funny and were joking about how he was small enough to fit inside the suitcase.’
As closing arguments wrapped up on Friday, Boone’s defense attorneys requested a mistrial after members of Torres’s family walked out during the footage of him zipped inside the suitcase was shown.
The motion was denied.
Boone had taken two videos of Torres trapped inside the suitcase, in which he was thrashing around and can be heard telling her he couldn’t breathe.
To which Boone replied, ‘That’s on you,’ before Torres was later heard yelling ‘I can’t f***ing breathe’ while she laughed.
‘Yeah, that’s what you do when you choke me… Oh this is what I feel when you cheat on me… For everything you’ve done to me, f*** you stupid,’ Boone was heard saying in the videos.
Boone had made claims that her boyfriend was abusive toward her. She told the court that Torres threatened to make her ‘unrecognizable’ or she ‘would have lost my life’.
A former neighbor testified that she had seen marks on Boone’s arm and neck, and Boone would discuss the abuse during conversation, reported Orlando News 6.
She testified that she hadn’t let him out because he had been forcefully trying to escape and that he was angry, expressing that she was ‘always in fear’.
‘His hand started to come through, and so I shook the suitcase to try and get his hand to go back in. Telling him please stop doing this to me,’ she told the court.
‘He used to tell me he would make me unrecognizable, or I would have lost my life,’ she added before stating she used a baseball bat to poke his hand back in and hit his hand.
Under cross examination, she admitted she wanted Torres to know how she felt living with his alleged abuse.
Boone then went upstairs and ‘passed out’ before awaking the following morning and finding Torres still inside the suitcase.
A detective had pointed out to her that she had refused to free him while he was ‘begging for you to let him out’, to which she responded: ‘It was not intentional. I will put my hand on the Bible. It was not intentional.’
On the call to 911, she described him as ‘stiff and purple’ with blood coming out of his mouth and it was later determined that Torres died as a result of positional asphyxia.
During the call, Boone was heard giving an emotionless recount of what had happened.
When asked the nature of her emergency, she had calmly said: ‘My boyfriend is dead.’
The 911 operator then coached Boone through CPR while she protested that she had already attempted and asked them to ‘hurry up’.
She said to the court that she was ‘aghast’ and was unable to describe the ‘feeling of terror’ upon discovering his body.
According to the arrest report, the autopsy found that Torres had scratches on his back, a large scratch on his neck, a cut lip, bruising on his left shoulder, and bruises on his forehead from ‘blunt force trauma’, reported Fox 35.
Both Boone and Torres had a reported history of violence. She was arrested in 2018 on a battery charge after the attempted strangulation of Torres, and he had was charged with battery from an alcohol-fueled altercation within their home.
According to the affidavit, Boone had wrapped her hands around his neck attempting to strangle him, prompting Torres to kick her.
A year later, Torres was arrested twice in one month on battery charges.
Defense attorney Owen responded in questioning that Boone was ‘convinced in her mind’ that she had no intention of killing Torress and that ‘this was just circumstance’.
He continued: ‘I think she felt bad about any murder conviction or pleading to any type of murder that she was somehow criminally responsible for Jorge’s death, and I think that’s where her mindset was.’
After four years of legal disputes, unforeseeable setbacks and several pre-trial hearings, Boone is expected to receive her sentencing on December 2.