Marsha Colbey and Kathleen Enstice

Marsha Colbey and Kathleen Enstice were brought together through the investigation of Colbey’s stillborn baby: Enstice, a forensic pathologist working for the State of Alabama, examined the infant’s body and supplied conclusions that helped turn Colbey’s loss into a capital-murder prosecution. Their relationship was not personal but institutional and sharply unequal: Enstice’s medical authority gave her claims weight in a case where Colbey was grieving, while the reliability of those claims was later contested by other experts.

The Exhumation and an Early Conclusion

Enstice was summoned to exhume the infant. Colbey, still grieving, was shocked that law enforcement had taken this step. Before she had formally examined the body, Enstice told an investigator that she believed the baby had been born alive. She later acknowledged that she had no basis for that opinion at that point: without an autopsy and tests, she could not know whether the infant had been born alive.

The distinction between an early impression and a supported forensic finding became central to the case. Enstice subsequently conducted an autopsy at the Department of Forensic Sciences laboratory in Mobile. She concluded that the baby had been born alive and asserted that the child would have survived with medical attention. The State allowed prosecutors to pursue criminal charges on the strength of a conclusion that became a consequential part of the case against Colbey.

Competing Expert Testimony

At trial, Enstice testified that the infant had been born alive and had 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 the death. That reasoning was challenged by the State’s own expert, Dennis McNally, an obstetrician and gynecologist who had examined Colbey two weeks after the stillbirth. McNally testified that her pregnancy carried a high risk of 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. He said he would not declare a live birth under the circumstances, much less classify the death as a homicide. His testimony directly undercut the certainty with which Enstice’s conclusion had been presented to the jury.

Authority and Consequence

The book places Enstice’s opinions in a broader professional context: forensic pathologists primarily examine people who have died, and most experts agree that they are not qualified to estimate a newborn’s chances of survival. It also notes that Enstice had previously declared deaths to be homicides prematurely and incorrectly, without adequate supporting evidence. These details make the gap between her initial assertion and the limits she later conceded especially significant.

For Colbey, the forensic relationship carried immediate legal stakes. A stillbirth investigation became a capital-murder case in which Enstice’s conclusions supplied the prosecution with an account of live birth and drowning, while testimony from McNally and Spitz exposed the uncertainty underlying that account. The conflict shows how a pathologist’s interpretation can shape the official meaning of a death—and how that authority may be tested when other experts examine the same evidence.