The View host Sunny Hostin claims she was holdout juror in who spared NYC cannibal killer prison in Butcher of Tompkins Square Park case

“The View” co-cost Sunny Hostin revealed Tuesday that she was the lone holdout juror in the 1991 trial of a notorious New York City cannibal killer — resulting in the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” being found not guilty by reason of insanity.Hostin made the boast, which stunned her colleagues, in a discussion about Lindsay Clancy’s own insanity defense, and the attempts by Clancy’s lawyer to question the holdout juror in that case.The gruesome Butcher of Tompkins Square Park case involved Daniel Rakowitz, a known weed dealer and East Village eccentric, who slaughtered his roommate, 26-year-old dance student and sometime-stripper Monika Beerle, in 1989.He then dismembered her and boiled her head for soup.He boasted that he ate her brains and also fed some to local homeless people.Rakowitz was found not guilty by reason of mental disease — an outcome Hostin, 57, took credit for as the jury’s only member not pushing for a conviction.“The insanity defense has been around in Massachusetts for 182 years, so I think it’s well established.

And I thought absolutely she was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity,” she said of the Clancy trial outcome.“And the reason I felt that — I feel so strongly about this holdout juror is became I was a holdout juror in a case in the Daniel Rakowitz case.I don’t know if people remember it, The Butcher of Thompkins Square.

It was in 1991…” she trailed off.“The guy who ate the victims?” cohost Joy Behar interjected.“Yes,” Hostin replied — drawing an audible gasp from panelist Alyssa Farah Griffin, who clasped her hand to her chest and asked, “you were on that jury?”Hostin, a former federal prosecutor, said she some people didn’t believe her when she brought it up during a pre-show prep meeting, but a producer found an old New York Times article about Rakowitz’s acquittal.“Several jurors questioned afterwards said one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventin...