Sophia Negroponte (Montgomery County State's Attorney's Office).
The daughter of the first U.S. director of national intelligence will spend over three decades in prison for stabbing her longtime best friend to death during a drunken argument in a Maryland Airbnb.
In November 2025, Sophia Negroponte, 33, was convicted on one count of murder in the second degree for killing 24-year-old Yousuf Rasmussen in February 2020. On Friday, she was sentenced to 35 years behind bars by Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Terrence McGann.
The case went through the legal process twice.
Negroponte was previously convicted of the exact same crime in January 2023, was meted out the same punishment in March 2023, and then had her conviction overturned in January 2024.
The underlying incident occurred on West Montgomery Avenue in Rockville – a northern suburb of Washington, D.C. – inside a carriage house behind a larger house, and all within just a few blocks of the courthouse where Negroponte would eventually be convicted and sentenced.
"The 35-year sentence mirrors the sentence imposed following the first trial in 2023," Montgomery County State's Attorney John McCarthy said after the verdict in comments reported by the Associated Press. "This is an appropriate and just outcome in light of the seriousness of this crime and the consistent findings of two separate juries who carefully evaluated the evidence."
The killer and her victim were longtime friends who attended the same high school. On the night in question, they were drinking with another friend when Negroponte eventually got drunk.
"Ms. Negroponte and the victim had verbally argued on two occasions during the evening," McCarthy explained in 2023. "[Rasmussen] decided that he was gonna leave, went to leave, then realized that he'd left his cellphone in the house and came back in. At that point, Ms. Negroponte had armed herself with a knife and stabbed him multiple times, one being a death blow that severed his jugular."
During the trial, prosecutors showed body camera footage featuring officers speaking to a male witness outside the carriage house who says Negroponte and Rasmussen had been friends for years. Several friends had been at the residence drinking that evening before "some kind of altercation" escalated into violence, the witness explained.
"Anger and a little bit of punches – I'm like, trying to calm it down – and then all of a sudden she grabs a knife from the drawer, and all of a sudden she like pulls it," the witness says in the footage while making a stabbing motion with his right hand.
In the footage, the man is then seen clarifying how Negroponte "hit" Rasmussen in the neck with the knife as the two were "scuffling."
But other statements seen by jurors would leave the case in shambles.
On appeal, a three-judge panel on Maryland's second-highest court overturned the first conviction by finding the trial court erred by allowing the jury to hear various opinions about the killer's credibility.
"We conclude that the trial court erred in allowing the jury to hear the contested portions of the video interrogation in which the police opined on appellant's credibility and by allowing the State's expert to opine on appellant's credibility," the court ruled.
Negroponte complained about six statements from her custodial interview that were entered into evidence and shown to jurors. The appeals court considered four of those statements. The judges found that those statements unfairly prejudiced Negroponte because witnesses are generally not allowed to offer opinions about a defendant's credibility — either directly or, as was the issue here, indirectly.
"Here the statements at issue indicate that the police disbelieved appellant," the court wrote. "The statements expressed the view that appellant's version was 'odd,' that it didn't 'make sense,' that they 'don't understand' why she was stating that she did not remember. The detectives commented that they found appellant's version of events 'hard to believe' and that it looked like appellant was not being honest. Under our long-established precedent, these kinds of assertions are not relevant and bear a high risk of prejudice."
Negroponte also raised the issue of a state expert witness testifying directly — and broadly — about her credibility as an accused criminal.
"She is a defendant in a murder trial, and so … you have to take what she says with a grain of salt because she has an incentive to embellish or diminish the amount of the alcohol she used because she's in that situation," Dr. Christiane Tellefson, a forensic psychiatrist, testified.
According to the appellate court, Tellefson's statement was a comment on the defendant's "credibility about a material fact" being disputed in the case and "was, therefore, prima facie, inadmissible."
Overall, the court found none of the five statements considered on appeal should have been heard by the jury. And, the court found, those statements were, at least in part, responsible for the guilty verdict.
The defendant was retried last fall without the use of those contested statements and convicted of the same charge. During her earlier trial, she was also accused of premeditated murder in the first degree, but found not guilty of that greater charge.
The victim's family released a statement after the initial verdict and requested that same statement be reshared last year.
"Yousuf was a kind and gentle soul, a loving person who brought our family and his many friends great joy in his 24 years of life," the family said. "We will carry him with us forever. To the family and friends from all over the world who have walked beside us on this difficult journey, we wish to express our deepest love and deepest appreciation for your support, for your prayers and for your compassion."
John Negroponte was the first person appointed U.S. director of national intelligence (DNI) when the position was created after 9/11.
Sophia Negroponte was one of five children adopted by John and his wife, Diana Negroponte, after he was appointed U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s, according to The Washington Post. Her father also served as ambassador to the United Nations under President George W. Bush and, later, as the ambassador to Iraq following the U.S.-led invasion. The former diplomat allegedly enabled human rights violations in Honduras and Nicaragua in the 1980s.