Kathleen Enstice

Kathleen Enstice was a state forensic pathologist whose unsupported early conclusion about a stillborn infant helped drive the capital prosecution of Marsha Colbey. Her case shows how a claim made before an examination could harden into a homicide theory, even as later testimony exposed serious limits in its scientific basis.

Role in the Colbey Investigation

Enstice was summoned to exhume the body of Marsha Colbey’s infant son, Timothy. Before she had formally examined him, she told an investigator that she believed the baby had been born alive. Enstice later conceded that she had no basis for that opinion at the time: without an autopsy and tests, she could not know whether the child had been born alive.

Afterward, Enstice performed an autopsy at the Department of Forensic Sciences laboratory in Mobile. She concluded that Timothy had been born alive and asserted that he would have survived if he had received medical attention. The distinction between a stillbirth and a live birth was decisive: an unexplained infant death became the foundation for alleging that a crime had occurred.

Testimony and Scientific Dispute

At Marsha Colbey’s trial, Enstice testified that Timothy had been born alive and died by drowning. She described her live-birth conclusion as a diagnosis of exclusion: she had found no evidence that the baby was stillborn and had no other explanation for his death. The account notes that most experts agree forensic pathologists, whose work primarily concerns the dead, are not qualified to estimate the likelihood that a newborn would have survived.

The prosecution’s own expert, obstetrician and gynecologist Dennis McNally, undermined Enstice’s conclusion. He had examined Marsha Colbey two weeks after the stillbirth and testified that her pregnancy was at high risk for unexplained fetal death because of her age and lack of prenatal care. Werner Spitz, who had authored the medical treatise Enstice relied on in her forensic pathology training, testified for the defense that he would not declare a live birth under the circumstances, much less a homicide. The testimony left the prosecution without credible scientific evidence that a crime had taken place.

Consequences and Wider Context

Marsha Colbey was arrested and charged with capital murder only a few weeks after delivering her stillborn son. Alabama treated the murder of a child under fourteen as a capital offense, a category that brought young mothers and juveniles into death-penalty cases. The book places Colbey’s prosecution within a broader pattern: women facing death sentences were often accused in family cases involving the unexplained deaths of children or alleged domestic violence involving male partners.

The account also describes a separate stillbirth prosecution in Pickens County, where a pathologist concluded that a baby had been born alive and suffocated. Six additional pathologists later examined the body and unanimously attributed the death to neonatal pneumonia, leading the prosecutor to drop the charges. The passage does not identify that pathologist by name, but the episode reinforces the stakes of premature forensic conclusions in cases involving stillbirth.

Significance

Enstice’s role in the Colbey case rests on a sharp sequence: an opinion offered before examination, a later autopsy conclusion presented as proof of live birth, and trial testimony challenged by medical experts. The case exposes how forensic authority can shape a prosecution before the underlying death has been reliably explained. It also shows the particular danger faced by poor mothers: rather than treating an infant’s death as a medical event requiring careful investigation, the State pursued a capital charge despite the absence of credible scientific evidence that a crime had occurred.