The murder trial of Sarah Boone, accused of suffocating her boyfriend in a suitcase in February 2020, has been delayed until Oct. 14 due to Hurricane Milton.
Jury selection in the trial was scheduled to start Monday, but Judge Michael Kraynick, after consulting with prosecutors and Boone’s defense team, decided to send the prospective jurors home.
All courthouses in the Ninth Circuit Court will be closed Wednesday and Thursday.
It is the latest delay in the case, which is finally coming to trial 4 ½ years after the death of Boone’s boyfriend, Jorge Torres Jr., in February 2020. The case had been delayed 16 times as of February.
Boone’s lead attorney, James Owens,asked Kraynick to delay the case again after he recently assumed the role of her attorney, but was denied. Owens told the Orlando Sentinel it seems like divine intervention.
“I mean, what are the odds of a hurricane coming to Orlando right in the middle of this trial,” he said, “when the judge had set a fixed date, he was not going to change it, except exceptional circumstances?”
During the hearing, Kraynick asked Boone about prosecutors’ offer for a plea agreement on a charge of manslaughter with a 15-year sentence in prison, instead of the minimum 22-and-a-half-year sentence Boone would receive if she continued to trial and was convicted of second-degree murder. Boone said she rejected the deal.
“We’re confident in our case, and she believes in her case and I believe in her case,” Owens told the Sentinel. “We came to an agreement that it was in her best interest to reject that offer and to take this case to trial.”
Attorneys also discussed the intense publicity surrounding the case and how it would complicate the jury process, especially due to social media and YouTube. Boone’s attorneys raised concern that some jurors may just want to get close to the case and “write a book later.”
The case has received international attention. A reporter from German TV station RTL who came from New York City was in the courtroom Monday.
Longtime prominent Central Florida defense attorney Mark NeJame, who’s served as an analyst for some of the region’s most historic criminal cases — including murder trials of Casey Anthony and George Zimmerman — told the Sentinel he doesn’t think the publicity will complicate the effort to seat a jury.
“There’s been a lot of cases with a lot more publicity than this, and you’d be amazed at how many people don’t follow or can remain unbiased,” NeJame said. “If they can find one for Donald Trump, they can find one for her.”
