Sunny Hostin once revealed that she and her husband accidentally left their 14-month-old daughter in a car for “about five minutes” on a hot July day in 2007, according to resurfaced footage.
The former CNN legal analyst recounted the incident during a September 2014 appearance on Anderson Cooper 360. She had also described what happened in a CNN opinion article published shortly beforehand.
Hostin and Anderson Cooper were discussing the high-profile case of Justin Ross Harris, a Georgia father who left his 22-month-old son strapped inside a sweltering vehicle for seven hours in June of that year.
Speaking as a legal analyst, Hostin said she was reluctant to reach conclusions before all the facts in the case had emerged.
“I think there are just a lot of unanswered questions,” she told Cooper. Harris was later convicted, but that verdict was overturned in 2022. He is now free.
Cooper referred to Hostin’s own experience while discussing how easily parents can make potentially dangerous mistakes.
“Yeah, and this story became personal for me, because I did write an opinion piece on CNN,” Hostin said. “I left my daughter, when she was 14 months old, in the back of our car.”
Conservative social media commentator Gina Milan reposted the account on X on Thursday, linking it to questions about Hostin’s more recent claim that she was a “holdout juror” in a prominent 1989 New York City homicide case.
Hostin Recalls Hot-Car Incident
“I was with my husband, and it was a hot July day,” Hostin recalled.
“And literally, Anderson — my husband left her in the car, I left her in the car. We went to get a shopping cart, took it past the car and went into Home Depot. I went into the garden center.”
“It was only after about five minutes that my husband came to me and said, ‘Oh my God — we left Paloma in the car.’”
Cooper responded, “And she was fine, obviously.”
“She was fine, but I will tell you, I’m still ashamed about it. I’m embarrassed, I’m horrified. I can see how someone can do this,” Hostin said.
“Had you asked me these questions prior to when I did this, this horrible thing, I would say no parent would ever leave their kid in the car. Even if you do leave your kid in the car, you should be charged. It’s negligent.”
The interview segment remains available on CNN’s website and YouTube channel.
Hostin’s accompanying opinion piece provided additional details about the frightening moment.
“I screamed, dropped my purse, ran to the car and opened the door,” she wrote. Hostin said the vehicle was “already warm” when they returned.
Paloma’s face was flushed, Hostin recalled, although the child was still sleeping and appeared to be fine. Paloma is now 20 and in college.
“I was ashamed, embarrassed and horrified at what I had done,” Hostin wrote.
“It dawned on me immediately — I could have killed my girl.”
Justin Ross Harris Case
She went on to point out how 22-month-old Cooper, Harris’s son, ‘did die.’
‘Harris left Cooper in a hot car, strapped to his rear-facing seat in Atlanta last week, when he went into work at a Home Depot corporate office, according to a Cobb County criminal warrant,’ the former federal prosecutor wrote.
The rest of the piece offered early details about the case.
‘Police are still investigating,’ Hostin warned. Harris had just pleaded not guilty to charges of child cruelty and felony murder. He was convicted in 2016 and freed on Father’s Day in 2024.
After his release, Cooper’s mother, Leanna Taylor, released a statement reiterating her belief that her son’s death was the result of an accident.
At the time, she expressed hope the Georgia Supreme Court ruling that freed her ex-husband would change how their son is remembered.
‘That he was wanted, that he was loved and that he is missed every single day,’ she said in a statement released by her attorney in June 2024.
Hostin, meanwhile, stopped her current show, The View, in its tracks on Tuesday, after claiming she was a ‘holdout juror’ in a more-than-30-year-old homicide case while discussing the murder mistrial of Lindsay Clancy.
A lone juror in Clancy’s case, since identified as Michael Desronvil, sought to find the mother guilty of murder in the strangling of her three children in 2023 despite pressure from the other 11 jurors.
Hostin, 57, sided with the latter, agreeing the mother lacked any ‘criminal responsibility’ for her crimes.
‘By reason of insanity,’ Hostin specified.
Hostin’s Holdout Juror Claim
‘And the reason I felt – I feel so strongly about this holdout juror, is because I was a holdout juror in a case.’
She went on to recall how she convinced the other 11 ‘one by one’ that Daniel Rakowitz was not criminally responsible for killing and dismembering 26-year-old Monika Beerle in their East Village apartment in 1989.
The admission left the other hosts stunned. ‘You got this guy off?’ Alyssa Farah Griffin asked at a point.
Hostin proudly pointed to a newspaper clipping that proved her participation in Rakowitz’s 1991 murder trial.
‘I’m in The New York Times,’ Hostin said.
The Times credited Hostin ‘with preventing a guilty verdict.’ She was quoted under her birth name, Asuncion Cummings. The report can still be found on the Times’ website.
However, on Wednesday, an unearthed New York Daily News report suggests the holdout juror was an unemployed man.
The paper quoted another juror, Valerie Holmes, who claimed the real ‘holdout’ only refused to convict Rakowitz to keep collecting a jury payment of $15-a-day. The juror mentioned was a male but not named.
However, yet another newspaper clipping resurfaced Wednesday by Newsbusters indicated there were two holdouts.
Conservatives like Milan quickly piled on Hostin for the discrepancies.
‘I’m actually not shocked this woman lied about being a holdout juror,’ she wrote, pointing to the 12-year-old CNN clip.
‘[She] felt bad for a psychopath who dismembered a woman and ate her brain as soup.’
Rakowitz, indeed, served the remains to homeless men in Tompkins Square Park in a soup shortly after the murder.
He is being held at the Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center in New York.
