Daughter of former U.S. intelligence director John Negroponte convicted of murder
The daughter of former U.S. intelligence director John Negroponte has been found guilty of fatally stabbing a 24-year-old man after a drunken argument inside a Maryland home.
A Montgomery County jury Tuesday convicted Sophia Negroponte, 29, of second-degree murder in the February 2020 death of Yousuf Rasmussen, news outlets reported. She faces up to 40 years in prison at her March 31 sentencing.
Sophia Negroponte was one of five abandoned or orphaned Honduran children whom John Negroponte and his wife adopted after he was appointed U.S. ambassador to the Central American country in the 1980s, according to the Washington Post.
Sophia Negroponte and Rasmussen attended the same Washington high school and had been drinking, along with another person, on the night Rasmussen was killed, Montgomery County State’s Atty. John McCarthy said. They argued twice that night, and Rasmussen left. When Rasmussen returned for his cellphone, Negroponte “stabbed him multiple times, one being a death blow that severed his jugular,” McCarthy said.
Defense attorney David Moyse had urged jurors to consider that Negroponte was so intoxicated that night that she couldn’t form specific intent.
“Alcohol pervades this case from the start; it pervades her life,” he said, adding: “And it is absolutely at the heart of what happened there that night. And it’s one of the major reasons that this is absolutely not a murder.”
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Jurors did not find Negroponte guilty of the most serious charge she faced, first-degree premeditated murder, according to the Post. But they convicted her of second-degree murder, finding that she intended “to inflict such serious bodily harm” to Rasmussen “that death would be the likely result.”
Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Terrence J. McGann ordered her bond revoked, noting that Rasmussen was “taken from this Earth, at a very young age with his whole life ahead of him, in such a horrific way.”
“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,” Rasmussen’s family said in a statement. “We will carry him with us forever.”
After the verdict, John Negroponte, 83, said his family would discuss a possible appeal with its attorneys.
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“Neither the prosecutors nor perhaps the jury took into sufficient consideration the complexities and mitigating circumstances of the case — Sophia’s past trauma and other factors that led to a very troubled existence. She’s had severe alcohol use disorder,” John Negroponte said.
President George W. Bush appointed John Negroponte as the first director of national intelligence in 2005. He later served as deputy secretary of State. He also previously served as deputy national security advisor and as U.S. ambassador to Honduras, Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations and Iraq.
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