Sunny Hostin confessed on The View that she was the holdout juror in the trial for New York City’s Butcher of Tompkins Square Park cannibal killer.
How did this lady not only get a law degree but also become a federal prosecutor!?
In 1989, Daniel Rakowitz murdered Monika Beerle, believed to be his live-in girlfriend. He confessed to murdering her, dismembering her body, boiling the body parts, and feeding some of the parts to the homeless in Tompkins Square Park.
That was me, and it was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic. Of course, he was in a psychosis. He did not mean to kill her, and once he killed her, he panicked. He he chopped up her body parts. Yes, boiled her body parts. Tried to commit the perfect crime, and then fed her…
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
The other hosts couldn’t believe Hostin prevented the guilty verdict.
Hostin continued:
That’s how much I believe in the insanity defense.
But all that being said, it was so clear to me in the jury room, and we were sequestered for nine days. One juror threw a chair at me. They were so angry with me, but one by one, I picked them off and said, “What about this? What about that? And we ended up all 12 unanimously. voting that he was not criminally responsible.
I encourage everyone to read this article from Village Voice: “The Untold Story of the Tompkins Square Murder.”
Monika’s friends begged her to throw out Rakowitz due to his outbursts.
“She was stupid to f*ck with him,” said one friend. “He told her he was gonna kill her. She said that he had told her that.”
Did you catch that? “He told her he was gonna kill her.”
Rakowitz has a history of psychosis and delusions of grandeur.
However, a mental illness, even a personality disorder, does not automatically mean you met the standard for the insanity defense.
The insanity defense rarely works out because the standards are so narrow.
The defendant must prove that “as a result of a severe mental disease or defect” they were “unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts.”
More from the story (emphasis mine):
On the evening of Thursday, August 17, Rakowitz walked Sylvia to the PATH train. As they shared a joint, he told Sylvia that he couldn’t take Monika anymore, he’d had enough. He said be planned to kill her the next day, and he asked Sylvia to come back and help him get rid of the body. “I said ‘Daniel, what are you, crazy? I ain’t gonna help you with anything.’ ” recalls Sylvia. “And he was really nervous. He was terrified. He was so terrified of being homeless.”
“I didn’t go there Friday,” she continues. “I didn’t think about: ‘It’s Friday — is Daniel killing Monika?’ On Saturday night, I could see from the street that the apartment was dark, and I knew something was wrong. But I went up there anyway. I was coming up the stairs and I heard Daniel’s TV, and it was really loud. And I opened the door, and his TV was in the kitchen, and it was very dim. I went back to my room to make sure my stuff was okay, ’cause I told him I was leaving it there for awhile till I got it all out. And Monika’s door was closed, and I went and knocked on Monika’s door, and nobody answered. So I went to the kitchen. And on the stove there was a pot. And in the pot was Monika’s head. She was all burnt-up, and her eyes were closed.”
So Hostin said she didn’t think Rakowitz meant to kill Monika? He clearly planned the murder for days. So not only did he intend to murder Monika, he premeditated it.
One of the friends said Rakowitz bought materials to commit the murder, chop up her body, and clean the apartment less than two weeks before the murder.
In other words, Rakowitz planned it.
Not only did Rakowitz plan the murder, but he planned how to dispose of her body and clean the apartment afterward.
Again, the defendant has to prove that at the time of the criminal act they were “unable to appreciate the nature and quality or the wrongfulness of his acts.”
Yeah, um, planning how to dispose of the body and clean the apartment before the murder tells me that he knew the murder was wrong before and during the act.
Since the jury, thanks to Hostin, found Rakowitz criminally insane, the state sent him to a state hospital for the criminally insane.
Permanently? Nope. State law allows Rakowitz to have “a jury review and rehearing every two years to examine his current mental state.”
If a jury finds Rakowitz is mentally healthy, he could return to the streets “pending further legal procedures.”
Luckily, he remains in the hospital.
The jury should have found him guilty of first-degree murder.
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Comments
She welched on a$100 bet with Andrew Branca during the George Zimmerman persecution
If she has horses, I’m told cutting off one’s head and putting it in her bag when she’s asleep can be highly effective 🐖😁🐈😁
Sunny Hostin is not known for being astute.
Probably though she could hire him cheap as a cook.
She’s got asinine and ignorant down though….
It just shows you how degenerate and nonsensical (dare I say insane?) the Communist Democrat party has become since 2015, and they were pretty bad before that.
They will defend capital crimes by people that even show premeditation, which to me, undercuts any insanity defense, as well as drug use, illegal aliens, child abuse in the name of more mental illness, hatred of the free market and America as a western nation, and more.
They aren’t like us, which is to say normal, or at least capable of critical thinking and common sense.
This show has become so ridiculous that one is almost forced to entertain the notion that it is a deliberate experiment in group dynamics to see what it takes for people to abandon their morals, ethics, principles and common sense.
Oh, it has to absolutely be paid propaganda. It is Colbert for bon bon eating Peg Bundys.
Peg Bundy was funny, like Whoopi used to be.
She is on-sight. For the sake of the lives she has risked and disrespected with her lunacy, she must not be allowed to live a quiet life.
Shit on her porch. Honk at her car.
Make every moment she exists miserable. I am so sick and tired of evil triumphing over the innocent and the good. Save us from these psychos
All of contemporary leftism’s/”progressivism’s”/Dhimmi-crat ideology’s core, animating, and malignant pathologies are encapsulated in this vile twit’s statement.
Abject stupidity (both intellectual and moral); self-congratulatory sanctimony; malignant narcissism; brazen hypocrisy; callous and arrogant indifference as to consequences stemming from one’s attitudes and actions.
Hostin’s mistake is that a criminal defendant can be (and, often is) simultaneously mentally ill and still cognizant of the distinction between right and wrong. Criminal law in the U.S. has historically appropriately set a high bar for defendants to successfully assert insanity defenses, for this reason.
Yet what she did was within her authority as a juror.
The same thing for which they are condemning that lone juror that did not knuckle under to the AWFLs in the room defending Clancy.
The two instances aren’t comparable.
The Clancy juror hung the jury.
Hostin pitbulled 11 other jurors until they all changed their vote.
Neither one was even technically jury nullification — Hostin’s jury turned in a unified vote, and Clancy’s holdout was for conviction, not acquittal.
She’s not condemning him, she’s defending him. That’s the context in which she revealed this. She thinks he was wrong, but he had the right to be wrong and should not be subject to all these attacks against him, and to illustrate that she cited her own experience.
Surely you understand that possessing authority as a juror to make a verdict decision is not the same thing as a juror correctly adhering to facts, caselaw and statutes in making that verdict?
Authority and jurisprudential fidelity, honesty and integrity aren’t the same thing.
Well, hard to say it’s at all surprising. She has literally managed to be wrong about everything
Here’s hoping the perp gets released and pays her a little visit to thank her. I’m sure afterword he’ll die of self induced food poisoning.
Had she done as you want, and voted to convict, he’d have been released long ago.
We seem to have reached a point where many refuse to hold any specific individual accountable for the consequences of their own actions/decisions. Murder your children after creating and executing a plan to get the Husband out of the house long enough to do it? ‘You go girl! We see you and acknowledge your trauma.’
Paradoxically these same folks have no problem condemning a particular group for the sins of their fathers (slavery but only within the US, not elsewhere), mere allegations of sins (believe all women/#metoo) or by advancing crude stereotypes (Jews are rapacious/rural Southern ‘whites’ are ‘ists’/MAGA/Tea Party are evil nazi) yet when confronted with the lack of credible or often ANY evidence to support their wild eyed claims they ‘nevertheless persist’.
We’re either gonna have a society/legal system/public policy that functions we on evidence or we’re gonna have one that functions on feelings, hormones and chemicals. No whining when some dude slaps the tased out your mouth for no particular reason other than he ‘felt’ like it. Must have been testosterone and we really can’t blame him, instead we obviously must offer gentle understanding and compassionate reassurance that it wasn’t his fault at all …it was the hormones fault and let him go.
And all the while blithely creating “crimes” and “convictions” of PRESIDENT Trump out of whole cloth and lies.
Sadly, I can’t praise one juror for voting his conscience while criticizing another for voting hers. I wish I could.
One can always criticize a fool.
The other jurors should have followed their consciences and not allowed her to bully them. Yeah she’s a fool but she was chosen for the jury. There were eleven others there. They did not have to accept her arguments. At worst she could have forced a mis-trial.
.
We have only her account to go by, and her account is not that she bullied them but that she convinced them. “Bullied” is an editorial word by her critics, and they have no basis for it but their own interpretation of what she says she did.
Hostin seems to suffer from her own psychosis and delusions of grandeur.
Not surprising, really. She finds half a dozen people “not guilty” for similar reason every time they’re on the air.
“That’s how much I believe in the insanity defense.”
Do unto others as you hope someday they will do unto you.
Consider reading some of the books by this author, Thomas Szasz, M.D. One of the few books that I have read in college was “The Manufacture of Madness.”
This looks appealing in today’s climate:
The Myth of Mental Illness: Foundations of a Theory of Personal Conduct ― The Classic Psychology Critique with a New Preface on Designer Drugs
by Thomas S. Szasz (Author)
“The landmark book that argued that psychiatry consistently expands its definition of mental illness to impose its authority over moral and cultural conflict.” — New York Times
The 50th anniversary edition of the most influential critique of psychiatry every written, with a new preface on the age of Prozac and Ritalin and the rise of designer drugs, plus two bonus essays.
Thomas Szasz’s classic book revolutionized thinking about the nature of the psychiatric profession and the moral implications of its practices. By diagnosing unwanted behavior as mental illness, psychiatrists, Szasz argues, absolve individuals of responsibility for their actions and instead blame their alleged illness. He also critiques Freudian psychology as a pseudoscience and warns against the dangerous overreach of psychiatry into all aspects of modern life.
All this tells me is she would vote with the liberal nuts cases on the jury.
From the NY Post, 7/21/2004:
A Manhattan jury has decided that Daniel Rakowitz, the so-called “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” is no longer a danger to society, a surprise verdict that could lead to him being released to a less-secure psychiatric facility.
…..
The jury of six men decided that Rakowitz is no longer a “physical danger to himself or others” – but also found that he is mentally ill, that he must receive in-patient treatment, and that he is “currently so impaired as to be unable to understand the need for such treatment.”
……
“I don’t think there was any doubt that he’s a murderer, that he did it,” said juror Kevin McCoy, 50. But McCoy said the jury was swayed by testimony that Rakowitz has not been violent in 13 years.
An alternate juror, Deborah Howe, 30, said she would have prolonged the deliberations because she found Rakowitz “scary.”
McCoy agreed with that diagnosis.
“No question, he’s a scary guy,” he said
………………….
Imagine having that kind of convoluted brain.
Rakowitz was turned down by a jury in ‘95. The judge in above case turned away the jury’s suggestion verdict. Rakowitz appealed, and a NYSC judge rejected the appeal in 2005. Another attempt in 2010 also failed. He remains in a max security nuthouse to this day.
Hostin and her P-iew cohorts need to be sent there as well.
She is about as vile as they come. A thoroughly revolting commentary from Hostin and her stupid, vain, yapping dog team.
Good Lord, just when you thought you couldn’t despise that alien looking creature any more – “that she blows”! There’s a big difference between “insanity” and “pure evil” – she took the side of PURE EVIL! I’m not surprised!
People might say someone is crazy to do what he did – I’d agree that it’s crazy but it’s still evil and he KNEW what he was GOING to do and then did it! Hostin is a horrible privileged creature!
What you’re ignoring is the fact that as a result of that verdict he’s been locked up for 36 years, with no prospect of ever getting out. Even if by some fluke he gets out at his next review he will still have served far longer than he would have had he been convicted.
And now it is coming to light that she lied to us about THAT.
Jason “Storm Chaser” Nelson
@RealJasonNelson
Why is Sunny Hostin lying about being the hold out juror?
According to this article, Asunción “Sunny” Cummings Hostin is actually upset with the holdout juror, saying she believed the cannibal defendant was aware of his actions. She was upset w/the juror pushing for a NGBROI verdict.
Is she really this desperate? It’s easily checked!
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Why isn’t this career ending?