The family of a Darlington nurse convicted of manslaughter said the prosecutors and family of the 16-month-old victim treated them unfairly.

“If my mother [Elaine Butler] didn’t offer to take them in — if Ashton and Kelly froze to death in that trailer — who would have been at fault then?” asked Greg Butler of Middle River.

Elaine Butler, 54, was given a five-year sentence Friday for accidentally giving Ashton Preston a cup of methadone his mother Kelly Briggs had poured Dec. 15, 2004.

Briggs and Ashton had been staying at the Butlers’ house rather than in the unheated trailer Briggs occupied outside Havre de Grace.

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Greg Butler said his family was distressed by prosecutor Salvatore Fili’s arguments that Elaine Butler waited to call 911 because she didn’t want to lose her nursing license.

Briggs, as Ashton’s mother, overruled Elaine’s initial instinct to call 911 after finding out Ashton had taken some of the methadone, Greg Butler said.

Butler said his mother had never dispensed methadone or dealt with methadone patients before meeting Briggs, who was taking the narcotic as a treatment for heroin addiction.

Fili and members of the Preston family questioned Elaine Butler’s apparent lack of emotion throughout the trial, but Greg Butler said she had suffered greatly since Ashton’s death, crying out to God and asking forgiveness for the pain she had caused both families.

Harford Circuit Judge Stephen Waldron’s order that she no longer practice nursing hurt her even more, Greg Butler said.

His father, who had undergone multiple heart surgeries, relied on Elaine Butler’s care and was unwilling to accept treatment from anyone else.

“My mother is a completely selfless person. ... Never in her life has she put her interest in front of anybody else’s,” Butler said.

msantoni@baltimoreexaminer.com