On Tuesday, “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin surprised her fellow panelists by revealing that she played a role in keeping a notorious “cannibal killer” out of prison back in 1991.
While discussing the case of lone holdout jurors and mistrials, Hostin shared that she was actually part of the jury for murderer Daniel Rakowitz, who in 1989 killed 26-year-old Swiss woman Monika Beerle. He went so far as to dismember her body, boil her remains, and serve them as soup to the homeless in New York City’s Tompkins Square Park. Despite this gruesome crime, a Manhattan jury declared him not guilty by reason of insanity following nine days of deliberation in February 1991.
Hostin recounted, “It was before I went to law school. When I mentioned it during a ‘Hot Topics’ meeting, I don’t think everyone believed me. But then my producer looked it up, and sure enough, there I was in the New York Times. Afterward, several jurors claimed that one holdout juror was primarily responsible for preventing a guilty verdict. That was me. I believed he was clearly psychotic and didn’t intend to kill her; once it happened, he panicked.”
During the discussion, she elaborated, “He chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts, tried to commit the perfect crime, and—” but co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin interjected, expressing disbelief, “And you got this guy off?!”
Hostin responded, “That’s how much I believe in the insanity defense. He fed her body parts to the unhoused.” She further described the jury’s experience, saying, “We were sequestered for nine days, and at one point, a juror even threw a chair at me; they were furious. But one by one, I managed to challenge them, and in the end, we all, twelve of us, unanimously agreed he was not criminally responsible due to insanity.”
The New York Times had reported back in 1991 that “one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict.” After the verdict, Rakowitz reportedly remarked, “I won’t fault you for your verdict. The prosecution had an overwhelming case against me. But I’ll be getting out soon and I’ll sell a lot of marijuana to get justice for those who really committed this crime.”
Interestingly, Rakowitz stated he preferred going to prison rather than a state hospital for the criminally insane, as he didn’t want to be medicated. He even humorously suggested to Justice Robert M. Haft that they smoke a joint together, although the judge simply smiled in embarrassment and referred to the trial as a “lulu.”
