Sophia Negropontes murder conviction is tossed, new trial ordered

The murder conviction of Sophia Negroponte, the daughter of former U.S. director of national intelligence John Negroponte, was thrown out by a Maryland appeals court Tuesday.

An opinion from three judges of the Appellate Court of Maryland sent the case back to Montgomery County for a new trial because the jury was allowed to hear portions of interrogation video showing police questioning Sophia Negroponte’s credibility as well as testimony from a prosecution expert witness who also questioned her credibility.

“The detectives commented that they found [Negroponte’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,” the court wrote.

Negroponte was convicted of second-degree murder in January 2023 in the killing of Yousuf Rasmussen, 24. She was sentenced to 35 years in prison. The trial in Montgomery Circuit Court focused heavily on whether she purposely tried to kill her friend by stabbing him in the neck or whether he was accidentally cut in a drunken fight in February 2020.

“My wife Diana and I sincerely welcome this decision by the Appellate Court of Maryland,” John Negroponte said Tuesday.

The Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office tried the case. Prosecutors there are exploring their options. “We are examining any possible appeals of this decision, but we remain absolutely prepared to retry the case if necessary,” state’s attorney’s office spokeswoman Lauren DeMarco said Wednesday.

Negroponte, 30, Rasmussen and another friend were in an Airbnb she was living in at the time on the night of the stabbing.

At trial, the other friend who was there that night testified that Negroponte kept initiating arguments with Rasmussen and that “no one became ‘overly intoxicated.’”

The altercations progressed through the night and ended with Rasmussen getting stabbed in the neck with a kitchen knife. The friend testified that Negroponte had grabbed a chef’s knife in the kitchen before Rasmussen was injured, but Negroponte testified that Rasmussen swung a knife at her that she had placed out for cheese. Negroponte said she had been very intoxicated that night and couldn’t remember certain details of the evening.

Negroponte’s attorneys “argued that Mr. Rasmussen’s death was the result of a chaotic series of fights instigated by Mr. Rasmussen and fueled by significant intoxication by all parties involved,” according to the appellate court’s opinion.

In appealing, Negroponte’s attorneys argued that the jury should not have seen six statements from her interrogation by two detectives calling her accounting of events into question. Detectives remarked that it was “odd” that she didn’t remember certain portions of the evening, that certain things she said didn’t “make sense” and that her saying she didn’t remember certain things “makes it look like you’re not being completely honest.”

The court agreed that the detectives’ comments should not have been included at trial.

“The fact that appellant repeated an allegedly implausible story — that she did not remember the moment of the stabbing — and that she changed her recollection of detail was relevant,” the court wrote. “The expressions of disbelief by the detectives, however, were not.”

Prosecutors had argued that the skepticism from detectives put her interview into context and that the officers did not assert that Negroponte was lying.

“Rather, they expressed natural skepticism to odd assertions by appellant,” the court wrote in summarizing the state’s argument. “The State argues that appellant added new details each time the detectives expressed skepticism.”

The appellate court indicated that the detectives didn’t necessarily engage in improper questioning — just that the jury should not have heard or seen certain parts of it.

“Notably, this Court has made clear that our holdings on the admissibility of officer statements of disbelief are not based on any police misconduct,” the court wrote. “Therefore, the question is not whether the police were confrontational or aggressive in a way that might have affected appellant. … Rather, the issue is what effect hearing the assertions of belief by police officers may have on the jury. Thus, the fact that the interview was not hostile is irrelevant to our determination.”

Negroponte’s attorneys also questioned the testimony of Christiane Tellefsen, a forensic psychiatrist who testified for prosecutors.

Tellefsen testified that Negroponte’s explanation for how much she drank is “most likely unreliable,” according to the opinion. When asked to elaborate, despite an objection from the defense, Tellefsen said that Negroponte was “suffering from alcohol use disorder,” which she said makes people “tend to both underestimate and overestimate what they had been drinking.”

Tellefsen also said that because Negroponte “is a defendant in a murder trial ... 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.”

Negroponte’s defense had requested the comment be struck and asked for a mistrial based on Tellefsen’s comment that Negroponte was less credible as a defendant in a murder trial, but Circuit Court Judge Terrence J. McGann allowed the case to go forward.

Negroponte’s lawyers in the appeal argued that certain statements from the expert were prejudicial because credibility was at the core of the case.

But attorneys for the state had argued Tellefsen’s testimony was an appropriate rebuttal to defense expert Michael O’Connell, who testified that Negroponte didn’t have a meaningful understanding of her Miranda rights because she was intoxicated.

“In support of this argument, the State notes that [Tellefsen] limited her opinion to appellant’s credibility as regards her drinking because that was the evidence that undergirded Dr. O’Connell’s conclusions,” the appellate court judges wrote.

Tellefsen’s comment on taking what Negroponte said “with a grain of salt” may have been “cabined to credibility on the subject of alcohol,” the court wrote. “But, given the centrality of alcohol in appellant’s case, the comment was nonetheless a comment on appellant’s credibility about a material fact” and, therefore, inadmissible.

Andrew D. Levy, one of Negroponte’s appellate attorneys, said reversal centered on whether it’s proper to introduce opinions about a defendant’s credibility during a trial. Rendering that judgment, Levy said, is generally the province of the jury.

“It’s just a red line that the courts in Maryland have drawn,” Levy said. “The jury is the one who decides who to believe.”

The reason, Levy said, is that opinions aren’t evidence.

Echoing the Appellate Court of Maryland’s ruling, Levy said it wasn’t that detectives did anything wrong by telling Negroponte during their questioning that they doubted her. The unfairness, he said, was that those statements weren’t redacted for the trial.

The same went for allowing an expert witness to tell jurors that Negroponte’s version of events was unreliable. “That was really prejudicial testimony,” Levy said.

The issues were particularly important in this case because there was such a difference between Negroponte’s account and testimony from the only other witness, Levy said, calling the case a “he said, she said.”

“Her credibility was really at issue in this case,” Levy said.

This article has been updated to include comment from the Montgomery County State’s Attorney’s Office.

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