Sunny Hostin Defends Lindsay Clancy's Insanity Defense: 'That's How Much I Believe'
On The View, Sunny Hostin revealed she was once a lone holdout juror herself — in a 1991 murder trial — as she defended the single holdout now forcing a retrial of Lindsay Clancy, the Duxbury mother accused of killing her three children.
Case at a glance
- Sunny Hostin — The View co-host
- Lindsay Clancy — former nurse charged in deaths of her three children, awaiting retrial, charged
- Daniel Rakowitz — 1991 defendant Hostin served as holdout juror for, found not criminally responsible
- Cora Clancy — daughter, age 5, victim
- Dawson Clancy — son, age 3, victim
- Callan Clancy — son, 8 months, victim
Next: A retrial for Lindsay Clancy is being eyed for March 2027. Until then, she remains held at Tewksbury Hospital. Her defense has also asked a judge to look into the lone holdout juror from the September mistrial, an inquiry that remains unresolved in the coverage reviewed here.
What Hostin said on the air
The headline moment came during Tuesday's episode of The View. Part of the show had been preempted by Donald Trump's speech to the United Nations, but the panel — Sunny Hostin, Alyssa Farah Griffin, Sara Haines, and Whoopi Goldberg substitute Star Jones — still got to the Lindsay Clancy case live on air, according to TV Insider.
The panel was discussing the mistrial in Clancy's case, which ended after a single juror refused to agree with the defense's argument that postpartum psychosis left her not criminally responsible for killing her three children. Hostin, who had already said she believed Clancy was not criminally responsible, then told her cohosts something that stopped the conversation.
"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," Hostin said, according to TV Insider. Griffin responded, "You were on that jury?!" and Haines said, "You're going to need to explain more."
Hostin said the revelation came as news to her own colleagues. "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," she said, per TV Insider. "And apparently, several jurors afterwards said, 'One holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict.' That was me."
The 1991 case Hostin says she decided
Hostin described the case as happening before she went to law school. The defendant, Daniel Rakowitz, became known in New York tabloids as the "Butcher of Tompkins Square Park" after killing a woman, then dismembering and boiling parts of her body, according to Hostin's account on TV Insider.
"He did not mean to kill her, and once he killed her, he panicked," Hostin said of Rakowitz, explaining her read of his mental state at the time. "He chopped up her body parts, yes, boiled her body parts, tried to commit the perfect crime and…" Hostin then added the line that gives this story its headline: "That's how much I believe in the insanity defense."
Hostin went further, telling her cohosts that Rakowitz "fed her body parts to the unhoused," according to TV Insider, which described the other panelists' reaction as visible shock. Hostin said the jury was sequestered for nine days and that "one juror threw a chair at me" over her position.
She said she worked the other eleven jurors over one at a time. "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 said. She added that Rakowitz remains in a mental institution today, calling it "a different type of prison," since "he's being treated because he's sick."
"That's how much I believe in the insanity defense," — Sunny Hostin, cohost, The View
What the Clancy case record shows
Lindsay Clancy, 36, a former labor and delivery nurse, is charged with killing her three children — Cora, 5, Dawson, 3, and 8-month-old Callan — at the family's Duxbury, Massachusetts home in January 2023. Prosecutors say she used exercise bands to kill them. Her defense does not dispute that she caused the deaths; it argues postpartum psychosis left her not criminally responsible under Massachusetts law.
Her first trial ended in a mistrial on September 4 after the jury deadlocked 11-1, with eleven jurors favoring a finding that Clancy was not criminally responsible by reason of insanity. A judge has since cleared the way for a retrial, with a trial date eyed for March 2027. Clancy remains held at Tewksbury Hospital.
Clancy's defense has separately asked a judge to investigate the lone holdout juror from the September trial — the same holdout Hostin was responding to when she drew the comparison to her own experience on the Rakowitz jury.
Reaction in the room
Hostin's cohosts reacted with visible disbelief as the story unfolded live. Griffin's "You were on that jury?!" and Haines's "You're going to need to explain more" came before Hostin had even described the crime itself, according to TV Insider's account of the broadcast.
TV Insider reported that as Hostin described Rakowitz feeding the victim's remains to unhoused people, "the other cohosts spoke volumes with their horrified body reactions" rather than responding verbally. Hostin pressed on with her account of swaying all twelve jurors to a unanimous not-criminally-responsible verdict.
TV Insider's report included a crisis-resource note alongside the segment, directing readers to the Crisis Text Line and the National Alliance on Mental Illness.
What Vinnie has said about this case
“When we watched Lindsay Clancy's criminal case, there was a theme that came from Kevin Reddington and it was a theme that everyone talked about that Lindsay Clancy's doctors were horrific.”
Vinnie Politan on his show, “Patrick Clancy's Lawsuit Is Already in Trouble” (October 28, 2026)
“Lindsay Clancy loses again and loses in a big way inside of the courtroom and this is now becoming a routine here for Kevin Reddington.”
Vinnie Politan on his show, “Lindsay Clancy Loses Again” (October 26, 2026)
What happens next
A retrial for Lindsay Clancy is being eyed for March 2027. Until then, she remains held at Tewksbury Hospital. Her defense has also asked a judge to look into the lone holdout juror from the September mistrial, an inquiry that remains unresolved in the coverage reviewed here.
How this plays in court
A prosecutor weighing a retrial of Lindsay Clancy has to assume the next jury pool has heard some version of this story — a sitting talk-show host, herself a former federal prosecutor, publicly siding with the side of the jury room that voted not criminally responsible. That cuts against the state, since it normalizes the idea that a single juror holding out for an insanity finding is principled rather than obstinate.
The defense will lean on exactly what Hostin described from her own experience: that postpartum psychosis, like the psychosis she says she recognized in Daniel Rakowitz, can be invisible to everyone in the room except the one juror willing to look for it. Expect Clancy's attorneys to argue that the 11-1 deadlock in September was not a failure to convict but a jury already most of the way toward the right answer.
A jury in the retrial will have to weigh the same question Massachusetts law asks in any insanity defense: not whether Clancy caused her children's deaths, which the defense does not dispute, but whether she lacked the capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of her conduct or to control it at the time. That is a clinical and legal threshold, not a sympathy threshold, and prosecutors will press expert witnesses hard on the distinction between severe mental illness and legal insanity.
The defense's pending request to have a judge examine the lone holdout juror from the first trial is a separate thread worth watching. If that inquiry finds any irregularity in how that juror reached or held their position, it could shape pretrial rulings before a March 2027 retrial even starts.
- TV Insider: Sunny Hostin Defends Lindsay Clancy's Insanity Defense: 'That's How Much I Believe'