Patrick Coats, a prisoner who tried to smuggle cannabis in his rectum into the Georgetown Prison, told Magistrate Hazel Octive-Hamilton that he got the drugs from a prison officer.

Patrick Coats

Coats, 19, resided at Lot 15 Plantain Walk, West Bank Demerara before he was sentenced to two years imprisonment for stealing a cellular phone in October, 2008. He was sentenced at the Vreed-en-Hoop Magistrates’ Court after he had pleaded guilty. He would have completed serving his sentence at the end of January this year but he will now spend another three years in jail.

He pleaded guilty to the charge of possession of narcotics for the purpose of trafficking when it was read to him Thursday at the Georgetown Magistrates’ Court. The man admitted to the court that on January 28 he had 32 grams of cannabis hidden in his rectum.

Coats and other prisoners were in the Le Repentir cemetery working on January 28. The cannabis was discovered in Coats’ rectum as he was being searched upon his return to the Camp Street prison.

He admitted that the cannabis was his and was subsequently charged. “Tell me where you got it from,” Magistrate Octive-Hamilton asked Coats when he pleaded with her for a “light” sentence.

In response, the defendant told the magistrate that a prison officer had given the cannabis to him.

Magistrate Octive-Hamilton sentenced Coats to three years imprisonment and also ordered that he pay a fine of $30,000.