Case Title: Ploof v. State

Citation: 

Docket Number: 47, 2018

State: delaware

Court: Delaware Supreme Court

Date: 2018-09-18T00:00:00Z

Document:
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE STATE OF DELAWARE 
GARY W. PLOOF, 
 
 
Defendant Below, 
Appellant, 
 
v. 
 
STATE OF DELAWARE, 
 
Plaintiff Below, 
Appellee. 
§ 
§  No. 47, 2018 
§ 
§  Court Below—Superior Court 
§  of the State of Delaware 
§ 
§  Cr. ID No. 111003002 
§ 
§ 
§ 
§ 
 
 
 
 
 
Submitted: September 12, 2018 
 
 
 
 
Decided: 
September 18, 2018 
 
Before VALIHURA, SEITZ and TRAYNOR, Justices. 
 
O R D E R 
 
This 18th day of September, 2018, after consideration of the parties’ briefs, 
and the record on appeal, it appears to the Court that: 
 
Appellant Gary Ploof was convicted in 2003 of first-degree murder and a 
lesser firearms charge. Under the then-governing first-degree-murder punishment 
scheme—which is codified at 11 Del. C. § 4209 and which provided an option of 
either death or life imprisonment without parole—he was sentenced to death. After 
this Court held, in Rauf v. State,1 that § 4209’s implementation of the death penalty 
is unconstitutional and later held, in Powell v. State,2 that Rauf has retroactive effect, 
                                               
 
1 145 A.3d 430 (Del. 2016) (per curiam). 
2 153 A.3d 69 (Del. 2016 (per curiam). 
 
2 
Ploof’s death sentence was vacated. The Superior Court resentenced him to life in 
prison without parole—§ 4209’s alternative sentence for first-degree murder. 
 
Shortly thereafter, Ploof moved to correct his sentence, asserting that he 
should have been resentenced not under § 4209, but under 11 Del. C. § 4205, which 
prescribes a punishment of 15 years to life for all Class A felonies other than first-
degree murder. 
I. The Crime and the Aftermath 
 
Ploof was a staff sergeant in the U.S. Air Force. He was married, but he had 
been having an affair with a colleague he met while working a part-time, off-base 
job. Some time after the affair began, he learned that the Air Force was planning to 
roll out a new, $100,000 life-insurance benefit for military spouses. Ploof then 
hatched a plan to kill his spouse and collect the life insurance benefit. 
 
Ploof drove his wife to the parking lot of a store, where he shot her in the 
head. He tried to frame the killing as a suicide, but the story did not hold up. 
 
He was convicted at trial of first-degree murder. During the penalty phase, an 
advisory jury unanimously found that Ploof had committed the murder for pecuniary 
gain—a statutory aggravating factor under § 4209(e)(1)(o). That finding made Ploof 
death eligible, and the jury further found that the aggravating factors in Ploof’s case 
outweighed the mitigating factors. 
 
3 
 
The Superior Court agreed with that finding and sentenced Ploof to death.3 
On direct appeal, this Court affirmed.4 
 
Over the next decade, Ploof tried a number of times to obtain post-conviction 
relief in both state and federal court, with no success. After Rauf and Powell, his 
death sentence was vacated, and in 2017, he was resentenced, under § 4209, to a 
mandatory term of life without parole. Shortly thereafter, he filed two motions with 
the trial court: a new motion for post-conviction relief and a motion to correct his 
sentence. The Superior Court denied both. The former motion is the subject of a 
separate appeal;5 the latter is the subject of this one. 
II. Ploof’s Challenges to his Sentence 
 
Ploof attacks his new sentence on two main grounds. First, he argues that it 
was not possible to resentence him to a mandatory term of life without parole under 
§ 4209 because he reads Rauf to have struck down the entirety of the statute, not just 
its death-penalty-sentencing procedures. Failing that, Ploof argues that imposing a 
mandatory punishment of life without parole on all first-degree murders—which is 
the effect of § 4209 now that the option of death has been enjoined—violates the 
Eighth Amendment.  
                                               
 
3  
State v. Ploof, 2003 WL 21999031 (Del. Super. Ct. Aug. 22, 2003). 
4  
Ploof v. State, 856 A.2d 539 (Del. 2004). 
5  
No. 48, 2018. 
 
4 
 
We recently rejected, in Zebroski v. State,6 each of Ploof’s arguments. Ploof 
recognizes the impact of Zebroski on his appeal, so his briefing is largely dedicated 
to relitigating those same arguments. None of them raise any points that we did not 
consider and reject in Zebroski. 
NOW, THEREFORE, IT IS ORDERED that the judgment of the Superior 
Court is AFFIRMED. 
 
 
 
 
 
 
BY THE COURT: 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
/s/ Gary F. Traynor 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Justice 
                                               
 
6  
179 A.3d 855 (Del. 2018).