‘The View’ has been on fire with idiocy lately. I know that’s an evergreen statement, but it’s become especially frequent lately. The Lindsay Clancy trial led Sunny Hostin to admit she had been a holdout juror in the Butcher of Tompkins Square Park case. She explained it at length, but there’s a problem: she might have misrepresented her role. The true holdout juror seems to be an unemployed man at the time who wanted the trial to keep going so he could get paid (via NY Post):

“The View” co-host Sunny Hostin sensationally claimed on-air that she was the lone holdout juror who forced a notorious NYC cannibal killer to be found not guilty by reason of insanity — but multiple sources from the time directly refute her story, The Post can reveal.

“Several jurors questioned afterwards said one holdout juror was principally responsible for preventing them from returning a guilty verdict,” Hostin read aloud from a New York Times article from the 1991 trial on Tuesday.

“That was me,” she asserted.

Hostin, 57, told the tale of being the lone jury holdout in the “Butcher of Tompkins Square Park” case as she discussed the parallels between that case and Lindsay Clancy’s own insanity defense.

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.

“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.

Ms. Hostin, did you lie? 

Daniel Rakowitz was later found not guilty by reason of insanity for the killing of Monika Beerle, a dancer, whom he later dismembered and consumed in 1989. He also boiled some remains into a soup and fed it to the homeless in the park.