Sarah Boone is accused of killing Jorge Torres Jr. (Courtroom screenshot from NewsNation/YouTube; Mug shot: Orange County Jail – Florida; victim’s photo from his obituary)
Apparently no attorney will satisfy a Florida woman accused of letting her boyfriend die while trapped in a suitcase.
Sarah Boone, 46, has now gone through eight attorneys, many of whom found her too difficult to work with. She will not have a ninth. Orange County Circuit Judge Michael S. Kraynick ordered Boone to represent herself at her trial.
“It has become apparent to the Court that Defendant will not permit herself to be represented by anyone,” Kraynick wrote in the June 28 order.
Boone is charged with second-degree murder in the death of her boyfriend, 42-year-old Jose Torres Jr. During a night of drinking on Feb. 24, 2020, Torres allegedly convinced Torres to curl up inside a suitcase. After she zipped the suitcase up, she began mocking him and accusing him of cheating on her and choking her, cops say. She allegedly refused to let him out despite his pleas. Boone found him dead the next morning.
She hired lawyer Mauricio Padilla, to replace the initial court-appointed attorney to represent her in the months after her arrest, but he flew the coop in 2022 because of “irreconcilable differences” and described their relationship as “adversarial.” Ever since, it’s been a revolving door of attorneys. Kraynick said the cycling through lawyers may be a delay tactic.
“Actions speak louder than words,” wrote Kraynick. “Although Defendant’s words seemingly reveal a desire to go to trial, however, as set forth herein, her actions and inability to work with court-appointed counsel, are repeated over and over. Allowing Defendant to her eighth court appointed attorney (her ninth attorney overall) will only serve to delay the case further and encourage Defendant to persist in efforts to prevent the resolution of the case on its merits (the concept of which was first brought Defendant’s attention on May 10, 2022).”
To be sure, not all of her former attorneys cited animosity with the defendant. Boone has bounced back and forth because some of those lawyers had conflicts of interest. For example, the public defender’s office had represented Torres in a domestic violence case in which Boone was the victim. The Office of Regional Conflict Counsel had to back off because they previously represented a witness.
That’s not the case with her last two attorneys, Frank J. Bankowitz and Patricia Cashman.
She blasted her latest attorney, Cashman, during a hearing last month.
“I feel she is untruthful with me and full-blown prejudiced against me, which I believe adds to her nasty attitude towards me, and I do not trust her,” she said of attorney Patricia Cashman, according to Orlando Fox affiliate WOFL. “Everyone constantly, constantly, constantly blames me that I am the reason why I am supposedly going on attorney number eight, which I am not the reason for any of them.”
She also said, “I have told her from day one that her snotty attitude was inappropriate, and I tried very hard to bear with her and her attitude.”
Cashman described the attorney-client relationship as being at an “impasse.”
“I know the court’s in a difficult position, but at this point, we’re at that impasse of, if she walks out of every conference that I have with her, I’m not sure what that says about the attorney-client relationship,” she said. “I’ve spent probably 20 hours — a little bit more, a little bit less with Ms. Boone. She has lots of lists, lots of questions.”
It was echoes of her friction with Bankowitz.
“He is unprofessional, hides, lies and is disrespectful,” Boone wrote last year, also calling him a “dud of an attorney.”
According to a 2023 motion, Bankowitz was similarly fed up with his then-client:
3. The Defendant will not be satisfied with any attorney unless said attorney does not have a case load and can dedicate his or her time solely to Ms. Boone’s case.
…
5. The best possible avenue is to have the Defendant represent herself as no attorney can satisfy her.
Boone complained in a June 25 letter to the judge that she was upset that she wasn’t informed that Cashman requested to be removed as her attorney until someone at the Orange County Jail told her.
She complained that case documents may have been lost between all her attorneys.
“Pardon me for having to utilize your invaluable tie to ask to receive my invaluable case items,” she wrote. “Please understand, I am trying to understand how and when I can fully, rightfully defend myself. Due process is overdue.”
Kraynick granted Cashman’s request to remove herself as Boone’s attorney. The judge ordered Cashman to send all of the discovery in the case to Boone at the jail.
Trial is scheduled to start Oct. 7 — and Kraynick is not budging on that date. The trial will “not be continued for any reason, except by extraordinarily good cause and such extraordinarily good cause shall not include retention of counsel by the Defendant,” he wrote.
Alberto Luperon contributed to this report
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