Sunny Hostin reveals she was holdout juror on case where man killed woman, dismembered her, boiled body parts
· Fox News
ABC'S "The View" co-host Sunny Hostin revealed on the liberal talk show Tuesday that she was a holdout juror on a case in a New York in the 1990s in which a man killed and dismembered his roommate, shocking her co-hosts as she argued, "I saw clearly that he was psychotic."
As "The View" discussed the Lindsay Clancy case, Hostin said she felt that Clancy was not criminally responsible. She said she also felt strongly about the holdout juror because she was once a holdout juror.
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Daniel Rakowitz was found not criminally responsible by reason of mental disease or defect in 1991 after killing his roommate, Monika Beerle, with Hostin later identifying herself as the holdout juror who initially prevented the jury from returning a guilty verdict. Because the jury found Rakowitz "not mentally responsible" for the murder, according to The New York Times, he was sent to a state hospital in New York for the criminally insane. NBC New York reported in 2010 that Rakowitz would remain at the maximum-security Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Wards Island after he petitioned to be moved.
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Hostin, whose maiden name is Cummings and whose first name is Asunción, was quoted in a Feb. 23, 1991, New York Times report about the trial, which said, "Several jurors questioned afterward said one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict."
"The View" co-host presented the article on the show while explaining the case.
"That was me. It was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic," Hostin said Tuesday during the show.
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"'We don't think he intended to kill her,'" said a juror, Asuncion Cummings. "'But once he did, he dismembered her body in an effort to commit the perfect crime,'" the Times report read, quoting Hostin.
"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," Hostin said during the show on Tuesday, noting how much she believed in the insanity defense as her co-hosts appeared shocked. "And he fed her body parts to the unhoused."
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Her co-hosts appeared shocked, as Alyssa Farah Griffin asked, "You got this guy off?"
Hostin added, "All that being said it was so clear to me in the jury room — we were sequestered for nine days, one juror threw a chair at me. They were so angry at me. But one by one, I picked them off. What about this, what about that? We ended up, all 12 unanimously, voting that he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity."
The Times report from 1991 said Rakowitz, whom the report described as a "former mental patient," eventually admitted to boiling Beerle's body parts. He left her skull in the baggage room at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in New York City in a bucket of kitty litter.
A witness, according to the Times, testified during the trial that Rakowitz had served soup to the homeless in Tompkins Square Park that contained a finger.
When reached for comment by Fox News Digital, NewsBusters managing editor Curtis Houck said, "This is beyond parody. Absolutely breathtakingly stupid that she would not only admit to this but also act like it's a badge of honor."
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Hostin brought the conversation back to the Clancy case and the news that Clancy's defense team was calling for an investigation into the holdout juror. Hostin called it "despicable."
"The insanity defense is a real thing and I think this lawyer, you know, who is — wants the juror investigated. That’s going to have a chilling effect on juries. Jury duty is a 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," she said.
Hostin went viral on Monday after she said her children faced racism while attending "predominantly White" private schools.
Hostin brought up the topic while discussing 1619 Project founder and The New York Times Magazine reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones, who recently admitted she regretted aspects of her decision to send her daughter to predominantly Black, high-poverty public schools in Brooklyn in an effort to challenge educational inequality.
"I think that this is a decision broadly that all parents make when it comes to educating their kids, but... this is a very difficult decision for Black parents, in particular, because I made a very different decision," Hostin said. "I sent my children to private schools, a predominantly White private school. So, while they didn't suffer academically, they excelled, but it was a well-funded school, a private school, well-resourced school, they suffered a different type of pain."
"There was psychological trauma, there was racism that they experienced," she added. "They were bullied. There was, you know, trauma around their identity. My daughter wears a big afro, kids were trying to stick pencils in her hair. Boys were calling her butter face, meaning she looked good, but her face, and she is a beautiful girl."
While Hostin conceded that her children "did not struggle academically" as Hannah-Jones' daughter reported, she expressed concerns about the "systemic problem" affecting predominantly non-White school districts.
Media Research Center associate editor Nicholas Fondacaro told Fox News Digital on Tuesday that it was the latest example of Hostin viewing everything "from a prism of racism."