In 1980, Colin Warner was sentenced to life in prison for a murder he didn’t commit. His friend Carl “KC” King did everything in his power to free Warner—up to and including amateur police work and becoming a legal courier to learn about the legal system. Warner and King’s story is fascinating and speaks volumes on race, the flaws of the American criminal justice system, the insidious ubiquity of coerced confessions, and the challenge of prosecuting murder cases without an abundance of evidence. As a dramatized version of these events, Crown Heights glosses over most of this. by Megan Burbank