To Sunny Hostin – “Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire!”

On the September 22, 2026 episode of The View, Sunny Hostin said she was the holdout juror in the 1991 New York trial of Daniel Rakowitz, nicknamed the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park.” She tied the story to the Lindsay Clancy case, which had just ended in a mistrial after one juror refused a not-guilty-by-reason-of-insanity verdict.

Rakowitz was charged with killing his roommate, 26-year-old dancer Monika Beerle, in 1989, then dismembering her body, boiling remains, and serving them in soup to people in Tompkins Square Park. After nine days of deliberations, the jury found him not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. He has remained in a psychiatric facility.

Hostin, then using her birth name Asunción Cummings, was a juror. A February 23, 1991 New York Times story said “one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict.” On The View she identified that holdout as herself, said another juror threw a chair at her, and said she gradually persuaded the rest of the panel.

Later reporting challenged the “lone holdout” part. The New York Post (September 24) cited 1991 interviews in the Post, Newsday, Daily News, and AP in which other jurors described the main holdout as an unemployed man who wanted to keep collecting the $15 daily juror fee and free meals. A law-enforcement source from the time also told the Post the holdout was a man. One Newsday account said two jurors, not one, had blocked a murder conviction. Hostin has stood by her version.