Mobile is a recurring setting where public narratives and private crises acquire force. Its newspapers helped shape regional perceptions of Walter McMillian, while a state forensic laboratory there became part of the prosecution of Marsha Colbey, and a hospital there treated McMillian after his health declined. These episodes give the city a role not simply as a backdrop but as a place where claims about guilt and evidence had practical consequences.

Media and the McMillian Case

Mobile’s press helped carry a damaging account of McMillian beyond Monroeville. After a hearing presenting evidence that he had not committed the Pittman murder, the Mobile Press Register ran the headline “Ronda Wasn’t the Only Girl Killed.” Its coverage also repeated law-enforcement claims that McMillian and Ralph Myers belonged to a mult county burglary, theft, forgery, and drug-smuggling operation, with McMillian as its leader. The book contrasts these allegations with the evidence presented in court and shows how the press narrative cast McMillian as dangerous even as his defense challenged the case against him.

That framing continued when 60 Minutes examined McMillian’s conviction. After the program aired, the Mobile Press Register called its account a “Disgrace,” echoing District Attorney Tommy Chapman’s condemnation. Local writers emphasized the distress the renewed attention might cause Ronda Morrison’s parents and treated the possibility that viewers might doubt McMillian’s guilt as an injury in itself. Yet the national broadcast also put the defense’s evidence before a wider audience, raising questions about the conviction and prompting some community and business leaders to press Chapman and law enforcement for answers. Mobile’s media presence thus figures in a conflict between the prosecution’s public authority and a competing account grounded in the hearing record.

Forensic Evidence in Colbey’s Case

Mobile also enters the narrative through the Department of Forensic Sciences laboratory, where forensic pathologist Kathleen Enstice performed an autopsy on Marsha Colbey’s stillborn son. Before formally examining the body, Enstice had told an investigator that she believed the baby had been born alive, although she later acknowledged she had no basis for that conclusion without an autopsy and tests. The subsequent examination did not end the uncertainty: Enstice concluded that the infant had been born alive and would have survived with medical attention, and prosecutors pursued capital charges against Colbey.

At trial, Enstice described the live-birth conclusion as a diagnosis of exclusion and testified that the child had died by drowning. The state’s own expert, obstetrician-gynecologist Dennis McNally, testified that Colbey’s pregnancy carried a high risk of unexplained fetal death because of her age and lack of prenatal care. Werner Spitz, whose medical treatise Enstice had relied on in her training, testified for the defense that he would not declare a live birth or homicide under the circumstances. The laboratory and the testimony arising from its examination therefore stand at the center of a case in which an initial forensic conclusion helped turn a stillbirth into a capital prosecution, while other medical testimony exposed the conclusion’s limits.

McMillian’s Hospitalization

Mobile was also where McMillian was hospitalized after his condition worsened. At a gathering at the Equal Justice Initiative office, he struggled to answer questions about a documentary, and his sister reported that he had begun wandering in the evenings and getting lost. He had also started drinking heavily, which he said calmed his constant anxiety. After he collapsed, staff at a Mobile hospital contacted Bryan Stevenson in Montgomery; Stevenson drove to speak with his doctor.

The doctor said McMillian had advancing dementia, likely induced by trauma, that he would need constant care, and that the condition would probably progress until he became incapacitated. His family arranged for him to live with a relative in Huntsville, but he became agitated and, with his money gone, returned to Monroeville, where his sister Katie Lee watched over him. His condition improved for a time before deteriorating again. Mobile is thus linked not only to the public struggle over how McMillian’s case was understood, but also to the bodily and cognitive costs that continued after his release.