Sunny Hostin Shares Bizarre Take on Lindsay Clancy Trial That Leaves ‘The View’ Cohosts Bewildered

Though part of The View‘s episode on Tuesday (September 22) was preempted by Donald Trump‘s speech to the U.N., what we did get to see live was a wild bit of storytelling from cohost Sunny Hostin.

As the panelists (including Whoopi Goldberg sub Star Jones) discussed the results of the Lindsay Clancy trial — which ended in a mistrial after a single juror refused to agree to her defense of insanity due to postpartum psychosis in the murder of her three children — Hostin shared a personal anecdote that left her cohosts in shock.

After reiterating her previously stated opinion that Clancy was not “criminally responsible” due to her mental condition, Hostin then shared, “The reason I felt so strongly about this holdout juror is that I was a holdout juror in the Daniel Rakowitz case — I don’t know if people remember it, the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park.”

“The guy who ate the victims?” Joy Behar asked, quizzically?

After Hostin confirmed, Alyssa Farah Griffin said with a gasp, “You were on that jury?!”

“You’re going to need to explain more,” Sara Haines said with her hands clasping her head.

ABC

“It was before I went to law school,” Hostin then continued. “And when I brought it up at the ‘Hot Topics’ meeting, I don’t think everyone believed me, and then my producer looked it up, and I’m in the New York Times. And apparently, several jurors afterwards said, ‘One holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict.’ That was me. And it was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic, he was in psychosis. He did not mean to kill her, and once he killed her, he panicked.”

From there, the explanation got even more unsettling. “He chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts, tried to commit the perfect crime and…”

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“And you got this guy off?!” Griffin then exclaimed.

“That’s how much I believe in the insanity defense,” Hostin answered. “And he fed her body parts to the unhoused.”

The other cohosts spoke volumes with their horrified body reactions as Hostin continued, “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 and said, ‘What about this? What about that?’ And we ended up, all 12, unanimously voting that he was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity.”

Hostin concluded her reasoning by saying that the defendant in the case is currently in a mental institution to this day, adding, “That’s a different type of prison, and he’s being treated because he’s sick.”

“I was a holdout juror.” As Lindsay Clancy’s lawyer is asking a judge to investigate the lone juror who refused to acquit Clancy by reason of insanity, Sunny Hostin reacts and reveals she was a lone juror in the 1991 Daniel Rakowitz murder trial. pic.twitter.com/DNG27b1Kbp

— The View (@TheView) September 22, 2026

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If you or someone you know needs help with mental health, contact the Crisis Text Line by texting HOME to 741741, contact the National Alliance on Mental Illness at 1-800-950-NAMI (6264). If you or a loved one are in immediate danger, call 911.