Sunny Hostin revealed on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, that she served as the sole holdout juror in the 1991 trial of Daniel Rakowitz, known as the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park.
The attorney and talk show co-host shared the decades-old secret during a live panel discussion on “The View.”
Uncovering a Decades-Old Jury Secret on Live Television
During a broadcast of “The View” on Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026, attorney and co-host Sunny Hostin stunned her fellow panelists by disclosing that she sat on the jury for one of New York City’s criminal trials three and a half decades ago. Hostin, who was 57 years old at the time of the revelation, explained that she served as the lone holdout juror during the 1991 proceedings for Daniel Rakowitz, a man dubbed the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park.
The discussion began as the co-hosts debated the controversial mistrial of Massachusetts mother Lindsay Clancy, whose case concluded without a unanimous verdict after a single juror could not agree to a not guilty by reason of insanity ruling.
“The reason I felt that I feel so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in a case, in the Daniel Rakowitz case.”
Sunny Hostin, Co-host of The View, via NBC News
When Hostin first raised the story during an editorial meeting, her colleagues questioned the veracity of the claim. To verify the account, a show producer searched newspaper archives and pulled up a historical report from The New York Times. The archived clipping confirmed that several jurors from the 1991 trial had told reporters that a single holdout had blocked the panel from returning a guilty verdict.
The Gruesome 1989 Case of Daniel Rakowitz
The historical trial centered on the 1989 killing of Monika Beerle, a 26-year-old dance student living in Manhattan’s East Village. Rakowitz, an East Village resident, was accused of killing and dismembering Beerle before boiling her remains and feeding them to unhoused individuals in Tompkins Square Park.
Hostin, who went by the name Asuncion Cummings before attending law school and later working as a federal prosecutor and legal analyst, recalled the intense nature of the crimes during the broadcast. She maintained that the evidence pointed directly to a severe mental health crisis rather than a cold-blooded premeditated murder scheme.
“And it was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic. He was in a 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 he fed her body parts to the unhoused.”
Sunny Hostin, Co-host of The View, via USA Today
Combative Deliberations and Stunned Co-Hosts
Securing a unanimous verdict required an exhausting nine-day sequestration period characterized by fierce disagreements among the jurors. Hostin described a hostile environment inside the deliberation room where fellow panelists pushed back hard against her resistance to a guilty conviction.
The pushback occasionally crossed into physical aggression. They were so angry at me, but one-by-one I picked them off
, Hostin recounted, noting that one frustrated juror even threw a chair across the room during the tense arguments.
The rest of the panel reacted with visible astonishment to the confession. Guest co-host Star Jones, seated next to Hostin, jokingly asked to move over, while Alyssa Farah Griffin expressed disbelief, asking, And you got this guy off?
From a 1991 Acquittal to Modern Psychiatric Detention
Despite the initial resistance, Hostin’s persistence paid off during the deliberations. All 12 jurors ultimately shifted their positions, returning a unanimous verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity in 1991.
Rather than walking free into society, Rakowitz was committed to a psychiatric facility following the verdict. Court and state records show that he was ordered in 2010 to remain at the maximum-security Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Ward’s Island.
Defending her historic decision decades later, Hostin emphasized that an insanity acquittal does not mean freedom. She noted that Rakowitz remains confined and receives ongoing medical care. That’s a different type of prison
, Hostin told her co-hosts, and he’s being treated because he’s sick.