Resurfaced CNN footage shows Sunny Hostin acknowledging that she once left her 14-month-old daughter inside a car for “about five minutes” on a hot July day in 2007, while discussing a separate child-death case.
Hostin recounted the incident during a September 2014 appearance on Anderson Cooper 360. She had also addressed the experience in a CNN opinion article published shortly beforehand.
At the time, Hostin and Anderson Cooper were examining the widely followed case involving Justin Ross Harris, a Georgia father accused of leaving his 22-month-old son strapped into a dangerously hot vehicle for approximately seven hours that June.
Speaking as CNN’s legal analyst, Hostin cautioned against reaching conclusions before all the facts were known and said she was reluctant to judge Harris prematurely.
“I think there are just a lot of unanswered questions,” she told Cooper. Harris was later convicted, though the ruling was overturned in 2022. He is now free.
Cooper referenced Hostin’s own experience while discussing the possibility that parents can make devastating mistakes more easily than many people might imagine.
“Yeah, and this story became personal for me, because I did write an opinion piece on CNN. I left my daughter, when she was 14 months old, in the back of our car,” Hostin said.
Conservative social media commentator Gina Milan revisited Hostin’s account in a post on X Thursday, using it while questioning the television personality’s more recent statements about allegedly serving as a “holdout juror” in a prominent 1989 New York City homicide case.
Sunny Hostin described the incident during a September 2014 appearance on Anderson Cooper 360, when she was working as a CNN legal analyst
The discussion centered on the high-profile case of a Georgia father who left his 22-month-old son secured inside a sweltering vehicle for seven hours that June
“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, pushed it past the vehicle and went inside Home Depot. I went into the garden center.
“It was only after about five minutes that my husband came over and said, ‘Oh my God—we left Paloma in the car.’”
Cooper then confirmed, “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 responded.
“Had you asked me these questions before I did this horrible thing, I would have said no parent would ever leave their child in a car. Even if you do leave your child in a car, you should be charged. It’s negligent.”
The 2014 segment remains available on CNN’s website and YouTube channel.
Hostin’s accompanying opinion piece provided additional context about what happened.
Social media commentator Gina Milan posted Hostin’s account on X Thursday as she and other conservative voices questioned several of Hostin’s recent on-air claims
Justin Ross Harris was convicted in the death of his son, Cooper, but the Georgia Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 2022. Harris is now free
‘I screamed, dropped my purse, ran to the car and opened the door,’ one line read. Hostin recalled how the car ‘was already warm’ when they returned.
‘Her face already flushed. But she was fine and still sleeping,’ she wrote of Paloma, who is now 20 and in college.
‘I was ashamed, embarrassed and horrified at what I had done.
‘It dawned on me immediately – I could have killed my girl.’
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.
Cooper pointed to an opinion piece Hostin wrote about the incident as well, while suggesting Harris’ mistake was more common than what many thought
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.
‘And the reason I felt – I feel so strongly about this holdout juror, is because I was a holdout juror in a case.’
Hostin claimed earlier this week she was a ‘holdout juror’ in the 1991 murder case surrounding Daniel Rakowitz, seen here after his arrest in 1989
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.
The New York Times credited Hostin ‘with preventing a guilty verdict’ in the case of Daniel Rakowitz. She was quoted under her birth name, Asuncion Cummings
Local newspaper reports uncovered by Our News Outlet point to a different version of events
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.
