Sunny Hostin Reveals Time as Holdout Juror
Sandra Rhodes · Sep 23, 2026 · 2 min read
Long before Lindsay Clancy’s trial ended in a mistrial due to a holdout juror, other trials ended the same way.
“The View” host Sunny Hostin revealed she was a holdout juror where a cannibal was able to avoid prison.
Hostin admitted to being part of the reason “The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” was found not guilty by reason of insanity in 1991.
Her admission was part of the show’s “Hot Topics” when the panel was talking about the Clancy case.
“The insanity defense has been around in Massachusetts for 182 years, so I think it’s well-established. And I thought absolutely that she was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity,” she said of the Clancy trial.
“And the reason I felt that — I feel so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in a case; in the Daniel Rakowitz case. I don’t know if people remember it, The Butcher of Tompkins Square. It was in 1991 …” she said.
“The guy who ate the victims?” co-host Joy Behar asked.
“Yes,” Hostin said as panelist Alyssa Farah Griffin gasped.
Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, read from a New York Times article about Rakowitz being acquitted.