A FLORIDA woman who is on trial for allegedly leaving her boyfriend in a suitcase to die will have to show that she had been helpless in an abusive relationship to get off the hook, a defense lawyer has revealed.

Sarah Boone was charged with the second-degree murder of her boyfriend Jorge Torres Jr., 42, after she allegedly zipped him inside a suitcase during a drunken game of hide and seek and did not return to let him out for hours.

Torres pleaded for help, saying he could not breathe in a video that investigators allegedly found on Boone’s phone.

Boone was heard laughing in the video, saying things like: “That’s what you do when you choke me.”

She eventually went upstairs and fell asleep, leaving Torres in the suitcase. The following morning Boone found him unresponsive inside the luggage.

Boone’s trial for the February 2020 murder started on Monday and an expert has already weighed in on how he sees the trial going.

Mark NeJame – a Florida defense lawyer from NeJame Law who has no affiliation with Boone’s case – exclusively told The U.S. Sun that Boone’s lawyer could argue the battered spouse syndrome defense if they wanted to try for a complete acquittal.

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Battered spouse syndrome has been used by victims of domestic violence who believed their only way of escaping life-threatening abuse was to kill their significant other.

However, NeJame explained that for Boone to win with this defense, she will “have to be able to show that she was a victim of this ongoing cycle of violence.”

If the defense chooses to convince the jury that Boone is a victim of the battered spouse syndrome, they will not only have to show an ongoing cycle of abuse, “but also that she felt helpless and that killing the other person was the only way out,” NeJame said.

“And that poses some difficulty in this case. Why? Because with a guy locked up in a suitcase, you could have surely gotten away,” the lawyer explained.

Another challenge that the defense will have to overcome is the video evidence of Boone taunting Torres while he was locked in the suitcase.

“There’s no question that hurts,” the lawyer admitted.

However, NeJame said: “If I were the defendant’s lawyer, I would simply say, she felt there was no way out.

“She wanted him to feel her pain and that because there’s been this cycle of ongoing violence where she thought she had no other way out, her words might not have been the best words to use that were videotaped, but it all the more goes to show how she had been so abused so long that now she was gonna get her comeuppance.”

He added that no matter what defense Boone’s lawyer argues: “There’s landmines ahead.”