![Sophia Negroponte mugshot (Montomery County Police]](https://am24.mediaite.com/lc/cnt/uploads/2023/01/Sophia-Negroponte-Montomery-County-Police.jpg)
Sophia Negroponte, daughter of John Negroponte, was sentenced to 35 years in prison for murder on March 31, 2023; a Maryland appeals court ordered a new trial on Jan. 23, 2024. (Montgomery County Police)
The daughter of John Negroponte, the first U.S. Director of National Intelligence and former diplomat who allegedly enabled human rights violations in Honduras and Nicaragua in the 1980s, had her murder conviction tossed out by a Maryland appellate court earlier this week.
In January 2023, Sophia Negroponte, 30, was found guilty by a Montgomery County jury on one charge of murder in the second degree for the stabbing slaying of her friend, Yousuf Rasmussen, 24. In March 2023, she was sentenced to 35 years in prison.
On Tuesday, a three-judge panel on Maryland’s second-highest court rubbished her conviction by finding that the trial court erred by allowed 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.
The underlying incident occurred in February 2020. Rasmussen, one of the defendant’s longtime friends, was stabbed in the neck and bled out inside of an Airbnb in Maryland during what all sides agree was some kind of drunken argument, altercation, or dispute.
Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy said during the trial that “substantial amounts of alcohol” consumed by the group of friends at the vacation rental on the night in question played a significant role in the violence that eventually unfolded.
“Alcohol pervades this case from the start; it pervades her life,” defense attorney David Moyse said during trial, according to a courtroom report by Washington, D.C.-based Fox affiliate WTTG. “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.”
During her trial, Negroponte also offered a markedly different version of events. That version heavily contrasted with the narrative provided by the state’s major witness, a third friend who arrived at the Airbnb later in the evening. Philip Guthrie testified that no one was actually “overly intoxicated” on the night of the killing. Guthrie also pegged Negroponte as the instigator of a series of scuffles between herself and Rasmussen. Negroponte, on the other hand, said Rasmussen started several play fights that grew tiresome and then deadly.
Guthrie and Negroponte also took issue with who was wielding the knife that fatally landed on Rasmussen’s jugular vein. The state’s witness said Negroponte grabbed and unsheathed a chef’s knife and then lunged for the victim. The defendant said the victim picked up a knife she had put on a table to cut cheese and then swung it at her.
Jurors, of course, ultimately disagreed with the defense’s version.
The case, however, was sent back to the Montgomery County Circuit Court for a new trial because jurors were allowed to hear two detectives question the defendant’s credibility during a portion of her initial police interview on body camera footage and because the state was allowed to have an expert witness call the defendant a liar.
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 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 dispute din 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.
“Here, the case turned primarily upon whether the jury believed appellant over Mr. Guthrie,” the judges wrote. “On Mr. Guthrie’s version of events, appellant did not engage in self-defense. On appellant’s version, she might have. Therefore, testimony affecting the jury’s ability to evaluate appellant’s credibility was paramount. Officer statements and expert testimony that appellant’s story does not make sense, is hard to believe, is not completely honest, or needs to be taken with a grain of salt because of her status as the defendant all affect the jury’s ability to assess her credibility. For that reason, we cannot say beyond a reasonable doubt that the errors were harmless.”
John Negroponte and his wife adopted five abandoned and orphaned children from Honduras — Sophia Negroponte among them.
Her father previously served as U.S. ambassador to the Central American country of her birth from 1981 to 1985. During his tenure in that post, Negroponte wrote glowing reports about Honduran Gen. Gustavo Álvarez Martínez, The New York Times reported. Alvarez, who led the country’s armed forces from 1982 to 1984, was responsible for death squads that committed hundreds of human rights abuses, according to the Honduran parliament and the CIA, The Washington Post reported.
Negroponte has denied that “systematic, numerous” human rights abuses took place under the Honduran government when he was ambassador, and that he worked behind the scenes to stop violence when it did occur.
Have a tip we should know? [email protected]
