Sunny Hostin once revealed that she left her 14-month-old daughter inside a car for “about five minutes” on a hot July day in 2007, a confession that resurfaced this week amid scrutiny of the television host’s recent claims.
Hostin recounted the incident during a September 2014 appearance on Anderson Cooper 360, shortly after writing about it in a CNN opinion column.
At the time, Hostin and Cooper were discussing the high-profile case of Justin Ross Harris, a Georgia father accused of leaving his 22-month-old son, Cooper, strapped into a hot car for roughly seven hours in June of that year.
Speaking as a CNN legal analyst, Hostin initially urged viewers not to rush to judgment while investigators were still examining the circumstances.
“I think there are just a lot of unanswered questions,” she said. Harris was ultimately convicted, though the verdict was overturned by the Georgia Supreme Court in 2022. He was released in 2024.
Cooper then referenced Hostin’s own experience, suggesting that such mistakes might be more common among parents than many people realized.
“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 replied.
Conservative commentator Gina Milan reposted the exchange on X on Thursday, linking it to questions surrounding Hostin’s recent claim that she had been 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
Hostin was discussing the case of a Georgia father who left his 22-month-old son strapped inside a hot car for seven hours
“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 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 interview remains available on CNN’s website and YouTube channel.
Hostin’s accompanying opinion piece provided additional details about what happened.
Social media commentator Gina Milan shared the resurfaced account on X as she and other conservatives questioned some of Hostin’s recent on-air statements
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,” Hostin wrote, adding that the vehicle “was already warm” when they returned.
“Her face was already flushed. But she was fine and still sleeping,” she wrote of Paloma, who is now 20 and attending college.
“I was ashamed, embarrassed and horrified at what I had done.”
“It dawned on me immediately—I could have killed my girl.”
Hostin contrasted her daughter’s survival with the death of Harris’s 22-month-old son, Cooper.
“Harris left Cooper in a hot car, strapped into his rear-facing seat in Atlanta last week, when he went to work at a Home Depot corporate office, according to a Cobb County criminal warrant,” the former federal prosecutor wrote.
The rest of the column outlined the limited information available about the case at that stage.
“Police are still investigating,” Hostin wrote. Harris had pleaded not guilty to charges including child cruelty and felony murder. He was convicted in 2016 before the judgment was later overturned, and he was released on Father’s Day in 2024.
Cooper cited Hostin’s opinion piece while discussing whether Harris’s actions reflected a mistake that could happen to more parents than many assumed
Following Harris’s release, Cooper’s mother, Leanna Taylor, issued a statement reaffirming her belief that her son’s death had been an accident.
She said she hoped the Georgia Supreme Court decision would help reshape how her son’s life and death were remembered.
“That he was wanted, that he was loved and that he is missed every single day,” Taylor said in a statement released through her attorney in June 2024.
Hostin’s earlier CNN comments resurfaced after she abruptly halted a discussion on The View Tuesday while claiming she had once been a “holdout juror” in a decades-old homicide trial. She made the remark while discussing the mistrial in the case of Lindsay Clancy.
In Clancy’s case, one juror—later identified as Michael Desronvil—reportedly argued that the mother should be convicted in the 2023 strangling deaths of her three children, despite opposition from the other 11 jurors.
Hostin, 57, agreed with the majority, saying Clancy lacked “criminal responsibility” for the killings.
“By reason of insanity,” Hostin clarified.
“And the reason I felt—I feel so strongly about this holdout juror is because I was a holdout juror in a case.”
Hostin said this week that she had been a “holdout juror” in the 1991 murder trial involving Daniel Rakowitz, pictured after his 1989 arrest
Hostin said she persuaded the other 11 jurors “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 revelation stunned her co-hosts. “You got this guy off?” Alyssa Farah Griffin asked at one point.
Hostin then cited a newspaper clipping that she said confirmed 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 identified in the article by her birth name, Asuncion Cummings. The report remains available in the newspaper’s online archive.
However, a New York Daily News report unearthed Wednesday described the holdout juror as an unemployed man.
The newspaper quoted fellow juror Valerie Holmes, who said the unnamed man refused to convict Rakowitz so he could continue receiving the $15-per-day jury payment.
A separate newspaper clipping resurfaced Wednesday through Newsbusters and suggested that two jurors, rather than one, had opposed a guilty verdict.
The New York Times credited Hostin with “preventing a guilty verdict” in the Daniel Rakowitz case. She appeared in the article under her birth name, Asuncion Cummings
Local newspaper reports uncovered by Our News Outlet present a different account of what happened during the trial
The conflicting accounts quickly drew criticism from conservatives, including Milan.
“I’m actually not shocked this woman lied about being a holdout juror,” Milan wrote, sharing the 12-year-old CNN footage.
“[She] felt bad for a psychopath who dismembered a woman and ate her brain as soup.”
Rakowitz did serve the victim’s remains to homeless men in Tompkins Square Park in a soup shortly after the killing.
He is currently being held at New York’s Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center.
