Brian Lee enjoys spending time with his grandchildren. Taking them shopping for school on a Monday morning is more important to him than they can understand at this stage of their lives. He wants to spend as much time with them as possible. Their father, his son Brandon, recently died.
Lee, who was incarcerated from 1992 to 2022, feels the loss of Brandon more deeply, having missed 30 years of his life. “I wish I’d had the opportunity to raise my three sons,” said Lee of his children who were 4, 3, and 2 years old when his prison sentence began.
A single gunshot sent Brian (22 years old), his brother, William Lee (19), and their friend, Eric Lightner (21) to prison for more than three decades – most of their adult lives, due to Colorado laws that sweep up anyone with connections to a criminal act or an accused person. The harsh application of these laws, and the omission of evidence that may have proved their innocence, made three men guilty of murder for a single gunshot that killed another young man.
On June 14, 1992, the two brothers and their friend were traveling east in a 1977 Oldsmobile Cutlass on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard in Denver. A 1981 Chevrolet Malibu pulled up beside them, driven by Damon Roberts, with passengers Tiffany Locke and Robert and James McGregor. The facts of the next few minutes are disputed, but Lightner confessed to seeing Roberts reach for a gun. Lightner took out a TEC-9 semi-automatic pistol and fired defensive, warning shots at the Malibu’s tires.
When the Malibu stopped near Madison Street, Roberts was wounded in the thigh, while 23-year-old James McGregor in the back seat was mortally wounded from a shot in the heart.
Later, physical testing of the TEC-9, recovered by investigators, connected the nine-millimeter weapon to shell casings and bullets that struck the Malibu. But, the 14 rounds from the pistol had not wounded anyone. Tests showed that the bullets that injured Roberts and killed McGregor were from a .38 caliber gun. Though the shots fired by Lightner, accompanied in the car by the Lee brothers, were not responsible for the injury or the death, zealous prosecution and Colorado sentencing laws resulted in murder verdicts for all three men and life sentences plus 50 years.
In December 13, 2018, Governor John Hickenlooper signed three commutation orders that reduced the men’s sentences to make them eligible for parole consideration. Their next parole hearings resulted in their releases on Dec. 1, 2022, but their murder convictions were not removed. The men felt their treatment was unjust, because without removal of the convictions, their recourse for compensation was limited.
After his release, Brian Lee visited his old friend, Kenneth D. Crowley Sr., to reconnect. The Lee brothers and Lightner had known Crowley for more than 40 years, since long before the state sent them to prison, and had followed the work of his foundation over the years.
He had founded the Crowley Foundation, a Denver-based nonprofit, in 2009, to provide mentoring, education, leadership development, and community support, with an emphasis on helping young men and families overcome social and economic barriers. Supported by its founder, the Crowley family and its board, the organization runs youth development programs designed to build confidence, responsibility, life skills, and strong pathways to education and employment.
The conversation between Crowly and Lee centered on the experience and impact of being locked up for his entire adult life.
“I spent all of my 20s…all of my 30s, and all of my 40s. You know, I got out at 51.” Lee continued, “Not only do people move on, but the whole state also moves on without you really knowing it.”
Lightner struggled with technology and navigation after release, and had a near-panic experience at Union Station, fearing a mistake might somehow get him in trouble.
In 2017 to 2018, the Crowley Foundation had plans for a documentary involving young men in the foundation’s programs. The project was abandoned after one of the subjects was killed. Crowley had other ideas after speaking with Lee. His wife, Jean Crowley, the foundation’s chief operating officer, suggested turning the story of the three formerly incarcerated men into a film. After some reflection, he decided to reach out to the men.
The foundation hired a production company and raised $145,000 for the project, with $50,000 financed to cover the initial work. Many members of the Crowley family served as directors and writers, with Nathan Letteer as producer. The project began in 2024, but political shifts in 2025 along with a tighter economic landscape caused several delays. The team finalized the film in October 2025. The documentary is designed as both an educational and preventive tool.
Anatomy of an Injustice
According to forensics, the TEC-9 that was recovered after the gunfire on Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard was not the weapon that killed McGregor. The fatal bullet was from a .38 caliber gun. So why did three men still end up receiving life in prison without parole, plus 50 years?
The prosecution still argued that the TEC-9 killed McGregor. Prosecutors also claimed that the three men were looking for Roberts after a confrontation at the Arena nightclub, based on information from witness testimony about an overheard conversation about retaliation.
No bullet holes were found in the Oldsmobile, and the initial search found no guns. Roberts reported that he heard two guns firing.
Locke identified the Lee brothers to police and believed she saw William shooting. However,
years later, she gave Gail Lee, Brian and William’s sister, a signed, notarized document stating that she believed McGregor accidentally shot himself during the incident.
The prosecution labeled the groups in both cars as gang members and described the incident as gang rivalry. Before the trial in the spring of 1992, gang violence was widespread in Denver, and that negative image was attached to the men.
The defendants belonged to a group they called Gangsters of Love (GOL), but they explained that they were just a group of young guys who competed to get girls’ phone numbers, among other things, and were not a gang. The prosecution, though, associated them with the Crips and Bloods.
The defendants’ attempts to seek separate trials failed, and they decided to defend together. They did not testify. The jury deliberated for a day and convicted all three of first-degree murder by extreme indifference and attempted murder.
Colorado law, found in the state’s Revised Statute § 18-3-102(1)(d), defines first-degree murder as “universal malice” and “extreme indifference to human life.” A Colorado Court of Appeals explained that this was different from intentional, premeditated murder. Murder with extreme indifference does not require a specific intent to kill one particular person, but instead, is extremely reckless conduct that threatens human life.
The prosecution did not have to prove that the defendants set out to kill McGregor. Lightner already admitted firing at the other car in self-defense. Firing into a vehicle filled with passengers was considered to have created a grave risk to multiple people that could, under state law, support a first-degree murder charge.
Other state laws further condemned the three defendants to severe sentencing. With several facts of the case inconsistent with a guilty verdict, the prosecutors, judge, and jury still threw the book at them through the harsh execution of state law.
Colorado’s complicity law, C.R.S. § 18-1-603, makes a person legally accountable as a principal for another person’s criminal conduct. This helped ensure the defendants would be sentenced together.
The state’s conspiracy law, C.R.S. §18-2-201, defines when a person commits conspiracy with intent to promote or facilitate a crime or aid in its planning. Based on the testimony about the defendants’ retaliatory intent heard at a club, the two brothers were convicted of conspiracy to commit murder.
Lightner was convicted of three counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder as well as counts of conspiracy to assault and menacing. The Court of Appeals vacated one count related to first-degree murder.
Colorado’s sentencing law on menacing requires threats or physical actions that place another person in harm. Use of a deadly weapon elevates the offense. The conspiracy and menacing elements worked together for Lightner.
First-degree murder is a class 1 felony and can be sentenced to life in prison or the death penalty. The law changed for offenses committed after September 20, 1991, so that life sentences carried the extra punishment of removing the possibility of parole. As fate would have it, the incident happened in June of 1992, so all three men received life without parole plus 50 years.
The Film about the Denver Three
The documentary, produced by the Crowley Foundation, leans heavily toward the men’s innocence. Regardless of whether they are considered guilty or innocent of a crime, some facts in this case cannot be ignored. Ballistics did not connect them to the murder, a witness stated that the bullet came from inside the victim’s car, and the severity and number of charges were extreme. The political climate pressured officials to take tough stances and paint Black men as vicious criminals. According to Crowley, even Denver’s first Black district attorney was among the officials making examples of the men. The subsequent costs were borne not only by the three incarcerated men, but also the lives of their entire families.
The case of the “Denver Three” cannot be divorced from the mass hysteria of the tough-on-crime political environment of the early 1990s. The ravenous pursuit of a three-for-one victory fueled the prosecution. The term super predator, one of the hallmarks of President Clinton’s Administration, was quickly used to describe any Black man who appeared in court. During Denver’s Summer of Violence, it created an appetite for justice at any cost.
Crowley produced this documentary for more than just raising awareness. The foundation views the film as an educational and preventive tool to teach civil rights and a proper understanding of the law. “Telling the men’s story, educating audiences, preventing similar outcomes for younger people, and ultimately helping generate legislative change,” he added.
The story of the Denver Three is a window into racism, politics, and the idiosyncrasies of the law that allow unequal and even hostile justice. Set in a period of a perceived crisis of violence, the upshot was aggressive sentencing and political grandstanding, according to many who either experienced or studied the consequences.
For Brian Lee, William Lee, and Eric Lightner, that chapter cost them their youth, their parents, and the chance to be fathers to their children. Meanwhile, those who manipulated the law to send a cruel message based on a narrative built on fear, have moved on, leaving wreckage behind.
As Brian walks through a store with his granddaughters, he is a man learning to navigate a new world. He still carries the “sea legs” of a long-term prisoner—that sense of imbalance that comes from suddenly having a horizon after years of incarceration. To the legal system, justice was served by the original verdict. For the Crowley Foundation and the men themselves, a “scapegoat mentality” subverted it by prioritizing an airtight arrest over a messy truth.
The most resonant image of this saga is not found in the courtroom or the documentary’s forensic slides, but in Lee’s school shopping trip with his granddaughters. He cannot go back to 1992 and raise his sons, but he can make sure his granddaughters have what they need for school.
As his mother once warned him, “Trouble’s easy to get in, but it’s hard to get out of.”
After 30 years, the Denver Three finally found the exit, but they are discovering that walking away from the past requires a balance that the law has yet to provide.
Note: Need more info on the premiere- A screening is planned at the Aurora Fox Theater.
