A man killed his roommate, dismembered her body, cooked the remains, and fed them to homeless people in a New York City park. The jury deadlocked because one juror — just one — refused to convict. That juror went on national television this week and called it one of the most important things she's ever done.

Her name is Sunny Hostin, and she co-hosts "The View" on ABC.

Hostin dropped this revelation on Monday's show during a discussion about the Lindsay Clancy case, which ended in a mistrial earlier this month. Clancy's case involved an insanity defense, and Hostin wanted the audience to know she had personal experience with the concept. Specifically, she was the lone holdout juror in the early 1990s trial of Daniel Rakowitz, a man the tabloids dubbed "The Butcher of Tompkins Square Park."

Rakowitz murdered his roommate, a Swiss dancer named Monika Beerle. He didn't stop at killing her. He dismembered the body, cooked parts of it, and distributed the remains to homeless individuals in Tompkins Square Park. The prosecution wanted him locked in a prison cell. Hostin wanted him in a hospital.

The jury was sequestered for nine days. Nine days of deliberation over a man who fed his victim to strangers in a public park. One juror got so frustrated with Hostin's position that he threw a chair at her during deliberations. She held firm. Eventually, the rest of the jury came around, and Rakowitz was found not guilty by reason of insanity.

"That was me," Hostin told her co-hosts, confirming she was the holdout. "And it was because I saw clearly that he was psychotic."

Co-host Alyssa Farah Griffin managed the response most of America was thinking: "And you got this guy off?!"

Hostin didn't flinch. "That's how much I believe in the insanity defense," she said.

Rakowitz remains institutionalized to this day — not in a prison, in a mental facility. That distinction matters to Hostin. Whether it matters to Monika Beerle's family is a question nobody on the panel thought to raise.

The insanity defense exists for a reason. Nobody disputes that. Genuinely psychotic individuals who cannot distinguish reality from delusion occupy a different legal category than a calculated murderer. The system accounts for this. But there's a canyon-sized gap between acknowledging the defense exists and going on daytime television three decades later to brag about deploying it on behalf of a man who cooked a woman and served her to park-goers.

Hostin described her jury service as "one of the most important things I think I've ever done." Not the most difficult. Not the most painful. The most important. She framed letting a cannibal avoid prison as a career highlight — on a show watched by millions — and waited for applause.

She also noted that investigating a holdout juror would have a "chilling effect on juries." Which is a fine procedural point. But nobody was investigating her. She volunteered the information, on camera, to a national audience, while smiling.

The insanity defense has been part of American law for nearly two centuries. It has survived because it's used sparingly, in cases where the evidence of mental incapacity is overwhelming, and where the public understands that justice was still served even if the defendant landed in a facility instead of a cell. What it was never designed to be is a talking point on a morning show — proof of one's moral sophistication, delivered between commercial breaks.

Monika Beerle was twenty-six years old. Daniel Rakowitz will never serve a day in jail for killing her. Sunny Hostin called it one of the most important things she's ever done.