Sunny Hostin bragged on Tuesday’s episode of The View that she was the lone holdout who kept Daniel Rakowitz, the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park, out of prison, but it appears that she lied.
People who sat in that room and the papers that quoted them in 1991 describe an unemployed man who liked the $15 a day and the free meals as the lone holdout in the case.
The Post reports:
But 35 years ago, jurors told The Post, Newsday, the Daily News and the Associated Press that the actual holdout was an unemployed man who wanted to keep the trial going so he could continue getting paid by the court for his civic duty.
A law enforcement source from the time also told The Post this week that the holdout was a man.
“He was unemployed and liked the $15 a day and the three free meals,” juror Valerie Holmes told Newsday in the aftermath of the verdict.
“He liked that we were arguing on and on.”
Holmes reiterated the claim to The Post and The Daily News, describing the holdout as being “very determined” and “manipulative” man determined to get his way.
“From day one, this particular person was determined that the jury was going to find Rakowitz not guilty by reason of mental disease,” jury forewoman Lois Markle told the AP at the time.
Meanwhile, Hostin was quoted as a juror on the case in multiple news clips at the time — but she did not identify herself as the holdout, nor did any of the fellow jurors who talked to the press after the trial.
In a statement to Newsday at the time, under her legal name Asunción Cummings, Hostin also contradicted her current claim.
“We had to compromise. But it is obvious to me he butchered the body and he literally got away with murder. He attempted to commit the perfect crime,” Hostin told the paper.
Hostin claimed she was the holdout during a discussion on The View about the Lindsay Clancy mistrial in Massachusetts, where one juror refused an insanity verdict in the case of the mother who brutally strangled her three children to death.
Hostin said she wanted Clancy to be found not guilty by reason of insanity.
“The reason I felt so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in the Daniel Rakowitz case. I don’t know if people remember it, the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park,” Hostin said.
Joy Behar asked, “The guy who ate the victims?”
Alyssa Farah Griffin said, “You got this guy off?!”
“That’s how much I believe in the insanity defense. He fed her body parts to the unhoused,” Hostin explained.
“All that being said, it was so clear to me in the jury room. 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. I said, ‘What about this? What about that?’ We ended up, all 12, unanimously voting that he was not criminally responsible on reason of insanity. He is still in a mental institution being treated. That’s a different type of prison, and he’s being treated because he’s sick.”
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