Before Sunny Hostin was a host of “The View,” she was a federal prosecutor. But before she was a federal prosecutor, and even before she went to law school, Hostin was just a normal citizen who got called for jury duty. She stunned her co-hosts on Tuesday though, when she revealed what jury she was on, and the fact that she was the holdout juror that prevented a guilty verdict.
To kick off the day’s Hot Topics, the ABC hosts discussed the case of Lindsay Clancy, which ended in a mistrial due to a single juror. Though 11 of the 12 jurors were prepared to clear Clancy of criminal responsibility for killing her children, by reason of postpartum psychosis, one juror insisted she should be found guilty. Discussing the case, Hostin noted that she personally sides with the 11, and feels “strongly” about the holdout juror, because she was one, in the case of Daniel Rakowitz.
“You need to explain more,” host Sara Haines immediately called out, as she and her co-hosts vaguely recognized the case.
Rakowitz was known as “The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” who murdered his roommate Monika Beerle. According to Hostin, his case happened before she became a law student.
“I’m in the New York Times, and apparently several jurors questioned afterwards said ‘One holdout juror was principally responsible preventing them from returning a guilty verdict.’ That was me,” Hostin admitted. “And it was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic.”
The ABC host then recounted some of the details of the murder, including how Rakowitz dismembered Beerle’s body, boiled the parts, and fed some of her remains to homeless people in the park, in the form of soup.
“And you got this guy off?!” Alyssa Farah Griffin bellowed in shock.
“Excuse me, can I move over?” guest host Star Jones asked as she physically tried to move closer to Haines.
Hostin and her co-hosts laughed about it, but Hostin insisted that she still feels passionately about the insanity plea today.
“It was so clear to me in the jury room, and we were sequestered for nine days. One juror threw a chair at me, they were so angry with me,” she recalled. “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 by issue with insanity.”
Hostin added that Rakowitz is still in a mental institution being treated, and “that’s a different type of prison.”
“The View” airs weekdays at 11 a.m. ET on ABC.
