Sunny Hostin revealed on Tuesday’s broadcast that she single-handedly prevented the conviction of New York’s infamous “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park.”
Hostin, 57, stunned her cohosts during a panel discussion about Lindsay Clancy’s insanity defense by disclosing she had served as the lone holdout juror in Daniel Rakowitz’s 1991 trial. The former federal prosecutor said she first mentioned the connection during a pre-show prep meeting, but some colleagues didn’t believe her until a producer located an old article about the acquittal.
“Several jurors questioned afterwards said one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict,” Hostin read aloud from the article on air. “That was me, and it was because clearly I saw he was psychotic, he was in psychosis, he did not mean to kill her and once he killed her he panicked. He chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts, tried to commit the perfect crime and then–”
“And you got this guy off?!” cohost Alyssa Farah Griffin interrupted, her mouth agape in shock.
“That’s how much I believe in the insanity defense, and he fed her body parts to the unhoused [homeless],” Hostin continued.
Griffin, who has publicly stated she does not believe Clancy’s alleged mental state excuses the killing of her three children, responded over cross-chatter, “That’s my issue with the law.”
Hostin assured the panel that Rakowitz “is still in a mental institution being treated.”
The revelation emerged during a discussion of Clancy attorney Kevin Reddington’s push to investigate the holdout juror in her mistrial who wanted to convict her. Hostin pivoted to her critique of Reddington’s call for probing the juror’s cellphone use during deliberations and his truthfulness on a pre-trial questionnaire.
“That’s going to have a chilling effect on juries,” she warned. “Jury duty is duty. It is one of the most important things I think I’ve ever done in my life. It was extremely difficult, but to investigate a juror for doing his or her duty is despicable.”
Hostin described the intensity of the Rakowitz jury deliberations, which stretched across nine sequestered days. “We were sequestered for nine days, one juror threw a chair at me, they were so angry with me but one by one I picked them off and said ‘what about this, what about that,’ and we ended up, all 12, unanimously voting that he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.”
The studio audience emitted a nervous titter as Griffin pressed Hostin on the outcome. “Excuse me, can I move over? I don’t need to be here,” cohost Star Jones half-joked from her seat beside Hostin, while panelist Sara Haines appeared to nervously tie her hair up and shift in her seat.
Rakowitz, a known weed dealer and East Village eccentric, slaughtered his roommate Monika Beerle, 26, a dance student and sometime-stripper, in 1989. He then dismembered her and boiled her head for soup, boasting that he ate her brains and fed some to local homeless people. He was found not guilty by reason of mental disease.
“The guy who ate the victims?” cohost Joy Behar interjected during Hostin’s account.
“Yes,” Hostin replied, drawing an audible gasp from Griffin, who clasped her hand to her chest and asked, “you were on that jury?”
Hostin also voiced strong support for the Clancy trial outcome, stating, “The insanity defense has been around in Massachusetts for 182 years, so I think it’s well established. And I thought absolutely she was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.”
