ORANGE BEACH — After more than a week of testimony, it took a Baldwin County jury an hour more or less on Wednesday to return a capital murder verdict against Marsha Gossett Colby, an Orange Beach woman who was arrested in February 2005 for allegedly drowning her infant son and burying him in a rear area of her Orange Beach property on Park Drive.

Colby will spend the rest of her life in prison as a result of the capital murder verdict.

The 43-year-old woman and her five children were living with Colby's common-law husband in a small camper at the time the infant's death occurred.

According to court documents filed in connection with the case, Colby gave birth to a male child on Feb. 3, 2005. She sought no medical care prior to the birth or afterwards.

Colby told police she buried the child on her property. Sgt. Steve Brown of Orange Beach Police Department obtained a search warrant on Feb. 9, 2005, to search for the infant. The body was recovered by the Department of Forensic Sciences. The autopsy listed drowning as the cause of death. It also determined the infant had been born alive.

Colby and her attorneys argued during the trial that the child was stillborn.

During a lengthy motions hearing in May 2006, District Attorney Judy Newcomb pointed out that Colby had previously given birth to a cocaine-addicted child and declined to go to the hospital when she was in labor in February 2005.

Colby's mother, who lives in Loxley, testified then that her daughter told her a few days after the birth that she (Colby) had a miscarriage.

(Staff writer Graham Heath contributed to this article.)