Dennis McNally

Dennis McNally was an obstetrician/gynecologist whose testimony in Marsha Colbey’s capital-murder trial weakened the prosecution’s account of a stillborn child’s death. Called by the State, he described medical circumstances that made unexplained fetal death a known risk in Colbey’s pregnancy, complicating the claim that the infant had been born alive and drowned.

Professional Role in the Case

McNally examined Colbey two weeks after the stillbirth. He was an obstetrician/gynecologist and appeared as an expert witness for the State, whose case depended on establishing that the baby had been born alive. The prosecution pursued charges after Kathleen Enstice, a forensic pathologist, concluded that the infant had been born alive and would have survived with medical attention.

Testimony and Evidentiary Conflict

At trial, Enstice characterized 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. McNally’s testimony supplied important medical context against treating that absence of evidence as proof of live birth. He testified that Colbey’s pregnancy was at high risk for unexplained fetal death because of her age and lack of prenatal care.

The conflict was especially consequential because the prosecution’s claim went beyond identifying uncertainty: Enstice testified that the baby had been born alive and died by drowning. The account of risk offered by McNally exposed the limits of that conclusion without, in the evidence presented, establishing that he himself determined the infant was stillborn. Werner Spitz, who had authored a medical treatise Enstice relied on in her training, separately testified for the defense that he would not declare a live birth or homicide under the circumstances.

Significance

McNally’s role shows how the State’s own expert testimony could complicate a capital prosecution built around a disputed medical conclusion. His testimony made Colbey’s pregnancy history relevant to an alternative explanation for the death, while the disagreement among witnesses underscored the difference between a forensic assertion and what the available evidence could establish. The case also unfolded in a broader climate in which poor mothers could be treated as criminal suspects after unexplained infant deaths; McNally’s testimony bore directly on the medical uncertainty at the center of Colbey’s case.