During Tuesday’s episode of The View, Sunny Hostin made a startling revelation, sharing that she was the lone holdout juror in a notorious 1991 murder trial.
While the panel was discussing the recent Lindsay Clancy case, Hostin, 57, disclosed that she served as a juror in the trial of Daniel Rakowitz, a man dubbed the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park.” Rakowitz was accused of killing Monika Beerle, then dismembering, boiling, and feeding her remains to homeless people in the park.
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“I was a holdout juror in the Daniel Rakowitz case… It was before I went to law school,” Hostin explained. She noted that when she first mentioned it to her colleagues at The View, they were skeptical until a producer confirmed the details in The New York Times archives, which identified her as the juror “principally responsible” for preventing a guilty verdict at that time.
Hostin stood by her decision, telling her co-hosts, “I saw clearly that he was psychotic. He was in psychosis. He did not mean to kill her and once he killed her, he panicked.”
The revelation left the other co-hosts visibly stunned. Guest host Star Jones jokingly asked to move away from her, while Alyssa Farah Griffin asked, “And you got this guy off?”
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Hostin went on to describe the intensity of the experience, revealing that she was sequestered for nine days and even had a chair thrown at her by a frustrated fellow juror. Ultimately, the jury reached a unanimous verdict, finding Rakowitz not guilty by reason of insanity. He was committed to a mental health facility, where he has remained for decades.
This experience predated Hostin’s legal career; she went on to graduate from Notre Dame Law School in 1994, eventually becoming a federal prosecutor before joining The View in 2016.