What is really lacking from SB is any normal emotion IMO.
If it was "a game" and she fell asleep/passed out, only to discover his death upon awakening, where's the horror? The devastation? The "omg, what have I done?"
I think we see instead how much she cared. She didn't. She doesn't.
I do think, in a real sense, it was a game to Sarah, just not in the sense she says. I think she felt she was winning, she showed him, she put him in his place, as it were. To humiliate, torture.
It directly resulted in his death.
She's an adult. She had to know it could interfere with his breathing, he could suffocate. They'd both been drinking, he could easily have asphyxiated on vomit. Human to human, she had a duty of care, in particular because she contributed to the precarious position he was in. Frankly, if she'd left him inebriated in a hot tub, IMO she'd still be party to a drowning death. Criminally negligent homicide. Had she left him in a garage with the motor running, same.
In SB's head, however, she is never wrong. She didn't spill the milk, you filled the glass too full.
Was SB too drunk to make lucid decisions herself? That might have been a defense worth pursuing, if there is such a thing, but IMO one has to take a wide perspective here.
She knew he couldn't get out of the suitcase himself, or he would have. Did she expect him to sleep it off? No one believes it was hide-n-seek. He was supposed to come find her in her ... bed? Uh, Sarah. That's not a good hiding spot. It's the opposite of hiding.
She purposefully left him in a preposterously dangerous position which resulted in his death where the risk of suffocation was high and it was obvious.
I don't see, given the video and her interviews, how a battered spouse defense can work. In her favor, that is. I think it works against her. If it was a response to a real, perceived or even protracted fear, why in heaven's name which she stay on site? Risk him getting out and coming after her, doubly provoked?
It wasn't self-defense. It was a power move. Had he lived somehow, you think she was going to start her morning letting him out and apologizing for leaving him there? More likely, making him beg for air.
She may well feel he deserved his fate, but that's not the legal standard. If she left him dangling over a pit of alligators...
And his many times have we heard it from drunk drivers after car accidents with fatalities? "I didn't mean to". Criminal vehicular suicide.
SB is no less culpable for this death than if she's pushed him in the water and filmed and taunted him as he drowned, regardless of the point at which she walked away.
Sarah, on the stand, will be the star the high school musical in her head. Poised, soft-spoken, harmless. Playing acting. I don't see it enough to over come Sarah, from her cellphone. Taunting a man as he lay dying.
What verdict the jurors attach to that remains to be seen.
JMO
