Sunny Hostin's 1991 holdout claim is under dispute
Sunny Hostin says she was the lone holdout juror who steered the 1991 “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” trial toward a not-guilty-by-insanity verdict for Daniel Rakowitz. Contemporary jurors and reporting, however, identified the holdout as an unemployed man, and Hostin has doubled down on her account.
Key Takeaways
- On “The View,” Sunny Hostin said she was the holdout who pushed jurors to find Rakowitz not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.
- The 1991 New York trial followed the 1989 killing and dismemberment of dance student Monika Beerle.
- Period quotes to Newsday, the AP, and others described the holdout as an unemployed man; a law-enforcement source told the New York Post the same.
- Hostin, then known as Asunción Cummings, was quoted after the verdict but did not claim to be the holdout at the time.
- Rakowitz remains confined at Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center on Ward’s Island.
The claim landed during a “View” segment about the Lindsay Clancy case, another insanity-defense drama that ended in a mistrial. Hostin tied her reaction to personal history on that true crime jury before she went to law school.
What did Sunny Hostin say on “The View”?
Hostin told co-hosts she was the holdout in the Daniel Rakowitz case, citing a New York Times clip that said one juror was “principally responsible” for blocking a guilty verdict. “That was me,” she said, according to NBC News.
She described nine days of tense deliberations and said one juror threw a chair at her. Hostin argued Rakowitz was in psychosis, did not mean to kill Beerle, then panicked, dismembered the body, boiled parts, and fed them to unhoused people in Tompkins Square Park.
Castmates reacted with shock. Alyssa Farah Griffin asked whether Hostin had “got this guy off,” while Star Jones joked about moving seats.
Who was the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park”?
Rakowitz was accused of killing roommate Monika Beerle, a 26-year-old dance student, in 1989 in Manhattan’s East Village. Coverage at the time and since has detailed dismemberment and claims he boiled body parts and served soup in the park.
In 1991, a jury found him not guilty by reason of insanity. He was later kept at maximum-security Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center. Hostin has called that confinement “a different type of prison.”
Do records and jurors back Hostin’s holdout claim?
The New York Post reported that jurors speaking in 1991 to Newsday, the Daily News, the AP, and the Post identified an unemployed man as the holdout who liked the daily pay and free meals. Forewoman Lois Markle told the AP that person was determined from day one to find Rakowitz not guilty by reason of mental disease.
Valerie Holmes told Newsday the man “liked that we were arguing on and on,” and later repeated to the Post and Daily News that the holdout was a determined, manipulative man. A law-enforcement source familiar with the case also told the Post the holdout was a man.
Hostin, then a 22-year-old paralegal named Asunción Cummings, was quoted after the verdict without calling herself the holdout. To Newsday she said the jury had to compromise and that he “literally got away with murder.” One Newsday piece suggested two holdouts; that report focused on the unemployed man and did not name a second.
Asked by the Post after her on-air remarks, Hostin laughed off the male-holdout account and insisted again: “I was. I was the holdout juror.”
The clash leaves a sharp gap between Hostin’s memory and contemporaneous coverage—without a definitive public roster proving which single narrative is complete.