Sophia Negroponte, the daughter of former U.S. intelligence director John Negroponte, has been sentenced to 35 years in prison for the fatal stabbing of a friend after a drunken argument at a Maryland home. The sentencing was handed down by Montgomery County Circuit Court Judge Terrence McGann following a retrial where she was found guilty of second-degree murder in the death of 24-year-old Yousuf Rasmussen.

Montgomery County State’s Attorney John McCarthy stated, “The 35-year sentence mirrors the sentence imposed following the first trial in 2023. 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 initial conviction in 2023 was overturned in 2024 after an appeals court ruled that the jury had been allowed to hear contested portions of a police interrogation of Sophia Negroponte and testimony from a prosecution witness questioning her credibility.

Sophia Negroponte, who hails from Washington, D.C., was one of five abandoned or orphaned Honduran children adopted by John Negroponte and his wife during his tenure as U.S. ambassador to Honduras in the 1980s.

John Negroponte, appointed as the nation’s first intelligence director by former President George W. Bush in 2005, has also served as deputy secretary of state and ambassador to Mexico, the Philippines, the United Nations, and Iraq.