Sunny Hostin dropped a decades-old bombshell on her co-hosts this week, claiming she was the lone holdout juror who kept Daniel Rakowitz — the man dubbed the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park — out of prison back in 1991. Hostin said she single-handedly persuaded the other 11 jurors to find Rakowitz not criminally responsible by reason of insanity, and that the deliberations turned so hostile that one juror threw a chair at her.
Hostin revealed she was a juror in the 1991 trial, according to Fox News, which reported she prevented a guilty verdict and instead convinced the panel to find Rakowitz not criminally responsible due to insanity. Hostin told her co-hosts on The View that she believed the picture was clear at the time. “And it was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic,” she said, per TheWrap.
According to the same account, Hostin said the jury was locked away for over a week as she worked to flip the room. “We were sequestered for nine days,” she said, describing how she methodically won over her fellow jurors rather than all at once. “One by one, I picked them off,” Hostin said. The process, by her telling, grew physical: “One juror threw a chair at me, they were so angry with me.”
Who Was Daniel Rakowitz
Rakowitz killed his roommate, 26-year-old Swiss dance student and topless dancer Monika Beerle, in August 1989, according to the seed reporting from the New York Post. The killing and its aftermath became one of the East Village’s most notorious crimes. Rakowitz was 28 at the time. He testified that another person put Beerle in a chokehold and another placed a metal rod against her windpipe. The New York Times reported he then dismembered her and stored her bones in a locker in Hell’s Kitchen.
The Times report also states Rakowitz was said to have cooked her remains into a soup he served to homeless people in nearby Tompkins Square Park. Two years after the killing, in 1991, Rakowitz was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed to the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Wards Island, per the Times. A report from amNewYork placed him at Kirby as of 2004; he was among inmates relocated from Kirby to Manhattan Psychiatric Center in 2020.
Hostin Defends Her Vote and Warns Against Scrutinizing Jurors
Hostin said she believed Rakowitz was psychotic and did not intend to kill Beerle, and said she and the other 11 jurors ultimately voted unanimously that he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity, per the seed report. She also called jury duty one of the most important things she had ever done, and argued that investigating a juror simply for performing that duty is despicable. Hostin warned that scrutinizing jurors’ deliberations could have a chilling effect on future juries, the Post reported.
Her comments came as The View discussed the separate case of Lindsay Clancy, whose Massachusetts trial ended in a mistrial after her jury deadlocked 11 to 1. Eleven of the 12 jurors were prepared to clear Clancy of criminal responsibility for killing her children by reason of postpartum psychosis, while one juror insisted she should be found guilty, according to TheWrap’s account of the case. The New York Times reported the deadlock led a judge to declare the mistrial.
Clancy’s Lawyers Push to Investigate the Lone Holdout
Clancy’s attorney, Kevin Reddington, has pushed to investigate that lone holdout juror, identified as Michael Desronvil. Reddington asked the court to question Desronvil about his alleged use of a cellphone during deliberations, as well as his answers on a pre-trial questionnaire, according to CBS News. The motion also sought a record of any calls or texts Desronvil made between 8 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. on each day the jury deliberated, according to PBS NewsHour.
Desronvil’s alleged cellphone use during deliberations remains a point of contention. Whether it will trigger a formal hearing, and what a judge might ultimately decide, remains unresolved.
