The View star Sunny Hostin has stunningly revealed she was the holdout juror in a high-profile cannibalism and murder trial.
The 57-year-old surprised her co-hosts with the grisly story on Tuesday while discussing the Lindsay Clancy case, which ended in a mistrial earlier this month. While most of the jurors were prepared to find Clancy not guilty by reason of insanity in the killing of her three children, one holdout juror insisted that she should be found guilty.
While explaining her support for the insanity defense, Hostin revealed her own involvement in the trial of Daniel Rakowitz, also known as the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” who was found not guilty by reason of insanity for killing and dismembering his roommate, 26-year-old Monika Beerle, in 1989.
“The reason I feel so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in the Daniel Rakowitz case,” Hostin said.
“The guy who ate the victims?” asked co-host Joy Behar.
“You need to explain more,” co-host Sara Haines added.
After killing Beerle, Rakowitz used her remains to make a soup which he fed to the homeless in New York’s Tompkins Square Park. Rakowitz was committed to a maximum security psychiatric center after being found criminally insane in 1991.
Hostin said the case took place before she went to law school and, after nine days of deliberation, she convinced the rest of the jury to unanimously vote that Rakowitz was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.
“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?’” Hostin said.
At the time, The New York Times reported that one holdout juror was “principally responsible” for preventing the jury from returning a guilty verdict.
“I saw clearly that he was psychotic,” Hostin explained. “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…” she added. “That’s how much I believe in the insanity defense. And he fed her body parts to the unhoused.”
Regarding the Lindsay Clancy trial, Hostin said she thinks “absolutely that she was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.”
Last week, Clancy’s defense attorney filed a motion asking a Massachusetts judge to investigate the conduct of the lone holdout juror, identified as Michael Desronvil.
“The insanity defense is a real thing,” Hostin said. “I think this lawyer who wants the juror to be investigated, that’s going to have a chilling effect. To investigate a juror for doing his or her duty is despicable.”
