COATS’S EXECUTION

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 68, 14 December 1931, Page 12

COATS’S EXECUTION

Thursday Morning Next

\ WARRANT ISSUED

Prisoner Calm When Told

Having received the warrant signed by the Governor-General, Lord Bledisloe. Intimating that he did not propose to interfere with the sentence of the court being carried out, the sheriff, Mr. W. Z W. Samson, has fixed the execution of George Errol Coats to take place at Wellington Prison, Mount Crawford, on Thursday morning next at 8 o’clock. Coats was tried in the Supreme Court before Mr. Justice Blair for the murder of Phillis Avis Symons, and was found guilty and sentenced to death. A susequent appeal was unsuccessful. Mr. Samson received on Saturday morning the warrant signed by his Excellency, and left soon afterward for the prison, accompanied by the deputysheriff, Mr. E. Rhodes. At the prison lie informed Coats that the sentence was to be executed on Thursday. Coats took it calmly and said “Thank you.” The last execution in Wellington took place in May, 1923, when Daniel Richard Cooper, principal figure in the Newlands baby farming case, was hanged at the old Terrace Gaol. The execution next Thursday will be the first to be carried out at the "Mount Crawford Prison. It is also the first that" Mr. Samson has had to carry into effect during a long experience. On previous occasions, when he has been sheriff in a district in which a man has been sentenced to death, the sentence has been commuted. Mr. Samson, has appointed a hangman.