A mother
who killed her toddler daughter by giving her methadone to help her sleep has
been sentenced to 30 years behind bars.
Courtney
Nicole Howell, 27, admitted to giving 17-month-old Jaslynn Mansfield the lethal
overdose in March last year, and said she will regret the decision for the rest
of her life.
“Trying to forgive myself is an endless battle
I struggle with daily,” she said through tears in court on Wednesday, the Salt
Lake Tribune reported. “I can’t make up my wrong by giving my little girl back
her life.”
Prosecutors
say that after her daughter stopped breathing, she called 911 – but failed to
tell doctors that she had given her the drugs. If they had known, the baby
might have lived, prosecutors said.
Jaslynn’s
relatives argued that Howell knew how deadly the drug could be because the
baby’s dad died from an overdose just months before the child’s birth.
An autopsy
showed that the girl died from acute methadone toxicity. When police searched
the child’s bedroom they found traces of methadone in one of her bottles.
State
records show that Howell had a prescription for methadone at the time of the
child’s death.
She was
sentenced on Wednesday after pleading guilty in July to second-degree
manslaughter and causing a child to be exposed to a controlled substance.
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