PHILADELPHIA — A Philadelphia nurse accused of helping her 93-year-old terminally ill father kill himself by handing him a bottle of morphine said Wednesday she was unjustly prosecuted, and her supporters begged Pennsylvania’s attorney general to refrain from appealing a judge’s decision dismissing the case.

Speaking publicly for the first time since being charged with felony assisted suicide, Barbara Mancini said her ordeal was an “unbearable torment.”

“I’m relieved and I’m happy and that’s something I haven’t felt for over a year,” said Mancini, who denounced the case as an “unjust prosecution.”

Mancini, 57, was charged last summer with giving a nearly full bottle of morphine to her father, Joseph Yourshaw, at his Pottsville home in February 2013 for the purpose of helping him end his life. Yourshaw died at a hospital four days later after a hospice nurse called 911 in what Mancini said was a violation of her father’s “end-of-life wishes.”

In an opinion issued Tuesday — the one-year anniversary of Yourshaw’s death — Schuylkill County Judge Jacqueline Russell said state prosecutors had failed to prove a crime occurred and based its case against Mancini on speculation and guesswork.

Mancini declined to comment when asked if she wanted to address first-term Attorney General Kathleen Kane directly. Her supporters from Compassion & Choices were more than willing to take on the first-term Democrat.

Mancini’s prosecution “did more than torment and torture one family,” said Compassion & Choices spokesman Gwen Fitzgerald. “The arrest of a family caregiver providing pain medication to a dying loved one has a chilling effect for families across the country,”