The View co-host Sunny Hostin stunned her colleagues this week when she revealed that she was the holdout juror in the infamous 1991 trial of Daniel Rakowitz, the so-called “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” and said she eventually convinced the rest of the jury to find him not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.
The revelation came during Tuesday’s episode of The View as the panel discussed the Lindsay Clancy case and the role of a holdout juror in that trial.
Hostin explained that she feels particularly strongly about the issue because she once found herself in exactly that position.
“The reason I feel so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in a case — in the Daniel Rakowitz case,” Hostin said. “I don’t know if people remember it, the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park.”
Her fellow panelists certainly remembered.
When Alyssa Farah Griffin realized what Hostin was talking about, she asked in disbelief, “You were on that jury?”
Hostin was. And remarkably, her story isn’t merely a decades-old recollection. Contemporary reporting from the trial backs it up.
Hostin Says ‘That Was Me’
Rakowitz was accused of killing 26-year-old Swiss dance student Monika Beerle in New York City in 1989.
According to contemporary UPI reporting, prosecutors alleged that Rakowitz chopped up Beerle’s body, boiled the remains, and fed some of them in soup to homeless people.
Rakowitz went to trial in 1991.
Hostin, then known as Asuncion Cummings, was on the jury.
During Tuesday’s episode, Hostin displayed a 1991 New York Times article reporting that one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing the jury from initially returning a guilty verdict.
“That was me,” Hostin declared.
Sunny Hostin brags about being a holdout juror that prevented The Butcher of Thompson Square Park from going to prison.
She admits “once he killed her, he chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts … and fed her body parts to the unhoused.” pic.twitter.com/sLbElgLuGt— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) September 22, 2026
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Hostin explained that she believed Rakowitz was experiencing psychosis and therefore wasn’t criminally responsible for Beerle’s death.
She then matter-of-factly recounted some of the most horrifying details of the case.
“He did not mean to kill her, and once he killed her he panicked,” Hostin said. “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.”
That prompted an incredulous response from Griffin.
“And you got this guy off?!”
Hostin replied that the case demonstrated just how strongly she believes in the insanity defense.
‘One by One, I Picked Them Off’
Perhaps the most extraordinary part of Hostin’s story was her description of the jury deliberations.
The jury deliberated for nine days, and Hostin recalled that tensions became so intense that another juror threw a chair at her.
But she refused to change her position.
Instead, Hostin said she gradually persuaded the other jurors to come around to her view.
“But one by one, I picked them off and said, ‘What about this? What about that?’” she recalled.
Sunny Hostin on The View – YouTube, The View
Ultimately, according to Hostin, all 12 jurors agreed that Rakowitz was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.
That account is supported by the historical record.
UPI reported on February 22, 1991 that after nine days of deliberations, the jury found Rakowitz not guilty of intentional murder and not responsible for depraved-indifference murder because of mental illness.
The jury was unable to reach a verdict on a charge of tampering with physical evidence.
Hostin Was Identified in Reporting at the Time
This isn’t a situation in which a television personality is inserting herself into a famous case decades after the fact.
Hostin was actually quoted in contemporary reporting.
As Fox News noted, Hostin’s maiden name is Cummings and her first name is Asunción.
Sunny Hostin speaking to JD Vance on The View – YouTube, The View
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The February 23, 1991 New York Times report quoted juror Asuncion Cummings explaining the jury’s thinking.
“We don’t think he intended to kill her,” Cummings said at the time. “But once he did, he dismembered her body in an effort to commit the perfect crime.”
Thirty-five years later, Hostin publicly confirmed that she was the holdout juror referenced in the story.
Rakowitz Didn’t Walk Free
There’s an important distinction in what happened to Rakowitz after the verdict.
Hostin’s actions helped prevent Rakowitz from being convicted and sent to prison, but the verdict did not result in him simply walking out of the courthouse.
Because Rakowitz was found not criminally responsible due to mental disease or defect, he was committed to a secure psychiatric facility.
Hostin emphasized that point after Griffin asked whether she had gotten him “off.”
Vice President JD Vance on The View – YouTube, The View
Rakowitz has remained institutionalized for decades, and Hostin described his confinement as “a different type of prison.”
Contemporary reporting also shows that the insanity issue wasn’t simply something dreamed up during jury deliberations.
UPI reported during the trial that jurors repeatedly reviewed psychiatric testimony concerning Rakowitz’s mental state. The jury ultimately accepted the argument that mental illness prevented him from being criminally responsible for Beerle’s death.
That legal distinction doesn’t make the underlying details any less horrifying.
The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park
Rakowitz’s case became notorious in New York because of what prosecutors said happened to Beerle after her death.
According to UPI, prosecutors alleged that Rakowitz killed Beerle after a dispute concerning their living arrangements, dismembered her, boiled portions of her remains, and served soup containing human remains to homeless people (Hostin described them as “the unhoused…”.
JD Vance on The View – YouTube, The View
The 1991 New York Times reporting cited during The View also described testimony that soup containing one of Beerle’s fingers was served to homeless people in Tompkins Square Park, according to Fox News.
Beerle’s skull was eventually recovered from the baggage area at the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
The sheer brutality of what happened made Rakowitz one of the most infamous figures associated with New York City’s East Village during that period.
And Hostin now openly acknowledges that she was the juror who initially stood between Rakowitz and a guilty verdict.
Hostin Still Defends Her Decision
Hostin didn’t tell the story as something she regretted.
Quite the opposite.
She used the experience to defend both the insanity defense and the independence of jurors.
The conversation began because attorneys in the Lindsay Clancy case have sought scrutiny of the holdout juror following a mistrial. Hostin strongly objected to the idea of investigating a juror simply for refusing to join the majority.
She called jury service “one of the most important things” she has ever done and argued that investigating someone for fulfilling that duty could have a chilling effect on future juries.
Arnold Schwarzenegger on The View with Sunny Hostin – YouTube, The View
Whatever one thinks of the verdict, Hostin clearly hasn’t changed her mind about the decision she made more than three decades ago.
She says she entered a jury room in which the other jurors wanted a guilty verdict, endured nine days of deliberations and even a chair being thrown at her, and ultimately persuaded all 11 of her fellow jurors to adopt her position.
And she apparently remains proud enough of that accomplishment to recount it on national television.
For her visibly stunned View colleagues, however, learning that Sunny Hostin played a pivotal role in the trial of the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” appeared to be quite a revelation.
How do you feel about Sunny Hostin and her role as a holdout juror? Sound off and let us know!
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