Coats v. State

LAWSON, Justice.

The appellant, Floyd Coats, was convicted of murder in the first degree and his punishment fixed at life imprisonment.

Elton Hill, a young man twenty-four years of age, died in a hospital in Florence, Alabama, at about 4:30 p. m. Sunday afternoon, April 25, 1948. Hill was killed by the discharge of a load from a shotgun, which entered his lower abdomen and ranged downward at “an obviously acute angle.” The load stopped at the pelvis, a distance of approximately six or eight inches below the point of entry. The wound was about three inches in diameter and' there was evidence of…