Sunny Hostin Says She Was Holdout Juror in 1991 Verdict

Sunny Hostin said on The View on September 22 that she was the holdout juror in Daniel Rakowitz’s 1991 New York trial and persuaded the other jurors to find him not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. Hostin said all 12 jurors ultimately agreed with that verdict after nine days of deliberations. Her identification as the juror is based on her own account and a newspaper report she cited; the supplied material does not independently verify that she was the holdout. Hostin recounted the case during a panel discussion about an insanity defense in another trial. She said she had resisted a guilty verdict because she believed Rakowitz was psychotic and not criminally responsible at the time of the killing. Hostin described pressing fellow jurors to reconsider the evidence and recalled that one juror threw a chair at her during deliberations. Rakowitz was tried in the 1989 killing of his roommate, Monika Beerle, a 26-year-old dance student. Accounts of the case say he dismembered her body and boiled her remains. Hostin also referred to reports that he fed some remains to homeless people.