Woman Who Abandoned Father With Alzheimer’s Gets Probation

A woman convicted of abandoning her father at an Idaho dog track because he suffered from Alzheimer’s disease was sentenced Friday to five years of probation.

Circuit Judge Alan Bonebrake ordered Sue Gifford to serve 180 days in work release, told her to put in 100 hours of community service and said she would not be allowed to care for any other dependent person.

Gifford, 41, was convicted last Dec. 3 of 22 counts of kidnaping, theft, perjury and unlawfully seeking public assistance for her 83-year-old father, John Kingery. Gifford left him in a wheelchair with a bag of diapers on March 21, 1992, at a greyhound track in northern Idaho.

During the sentencing hearing, Bonebrake voided all of her convictions except the kidnaping count to comply with an Oregon Appeals Court ruling requiring seven members of a grand jury to be present to hand up indictments.

Many prosecutors around the state had believed the Oregon Constitution required a minimum of five grand jurors, including those handling part of the Gifford case in Washington County. The kidnaping indictment was handed up by a separate grand jury with an adequate number of jurors.

The ruling has been appealed to the Oregon Supreme Court.

Prosecutors said Gifford kidnaped her father from a Portland nursing home when officials there questioned her about his Ford Motor Co. pension, which by law should have gone to help pay nursing home bills otherwise covered by Medicaid.

Kingery died Nov. 2 at a Morgantown, Ky., nursing home.