Florida judge in trial of woman accused of letting boyfriend die in suitcase denies bid to exclude statements

ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. – Ahead of a murder trial for an Orlando woman accused of leaving her boyfriend to die in a sealed suitcase, new records show a judge on Thursday denied the defense’s request to exclude certain evidence.

Sarah Boone, 46, was arrested in 2020 following the death of 42-year-old Jorge Torres Jr., her boyfriend, that February.

Boone, who faces a charge of second-degree murder, is accused of leaving Torres to die of asphyxiation in a zipped suitcase for up to 11 hours as he called out for her. She has pleaded not guilty.

Now working with her ninth attorney, Boone’s trial is scheduled to begin on Oct. 7.

The defense filed the request last month to exclude recorded statements that Boone made while being interviewed at the Orange County Sheriff’s Office in 2020. In that request, the defense apparently wished to argue that Boone felt tricked by a detective who had responded to her initial 911 call.

The defense’s request goes on to describe how Boone was later asked to retrieve her cellphone at the sheriff’s office, yet was interviewed for around two hours once she arrived. The defense accused the detective of coercing Boone, alleging that the detective had read an incomplete Miranda warning to her.

The denial was issued on Thursday. That ruling, which contained the audio transcription of that same Miranda warning, denied the motion on precedent — Miller v. State (Fla. 2010) — stating that “the Florida Supreme Court and the United States Supreme Court have ‘[s]tressed that there is not a talismanic incantation required to ensure [that Miranda] warnings are sufficiently conveyed,’” i.e. the judge deemed that the detective’s Miranda warning was sound.

Further, Boone’s attorney had also requested in September to rely on “battered spouse syndrome” for the defense, claiming it was “a result of the physical and psychological abuse the defendant sustained at the hands of the alleged victim” and including the names and addresses of at least six witnesses, one of them a doctor.

A judge on Sept. 20 denied the state’s request to prevent Boone from using battered spouse syndrome in her defense and opening statements and granted a motion for Boone to submit to an examination by an expert of the state’s choosing, referencing Dillbeck v. State (Fla. 1994).

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