A number of critics have pointed to the liberties taken by screen writers Armyan Berstein and Dan Gordon in telling  the story. According to Selwyn Raab, the New York Times reporter who covered the original court case, several aspects of Carter's personal and legal history have been changed by the screen writers. Likewise, Lewis M. Steel, one of the lawyers who contributed decades of pro bono work, taking appeals all the way to the New Jersey Supreme Court, asserts that the movie is more a work of fiction than fact. In an article written for The Nation, he writes: 

Steel's point is that in making the villain of the story a single, corrupt police officer rather than a system of justice which is itself corrupted by racism, the movie fails in coming to grips with the problem underlying the wrongful conviction in the first place, namely, the institutional racism that made such a miscarriage of justice possible then and now. Likewise, in exaggerating the role of the three Canadians and the teenager who play the heroes in the movie, the film makers obscure the actual reason for Carter's ultimate vindication in a court of law, namely, the lawyers' tireless struggle for justice in this case and reform of the criminal justice system itself. This is an ongoing struggle which contemporary reports of racial profiling by police in the state of New Jersey make clear.

Other critics have pointed out that in reaching for maximum emotional impact, the film makers have reduced a far more complicated sequence of events into the simple contours of a morality play. For example, Stephen Holden, of the New York Times writes:

Interestingly enough, the same criticisms could be made of many of the sermons and editorials of this weekend in which Martin Luther King is remembered. The complexities of his personal life and even the flaws of his character are often overlooked in the interest in finding in his life a parable for our time. Clearly the Martin Luther King that most Americans remember is more legend that reality. This may in fact be a direct result of King's own role as a prophet and preacher who was addressing issues of conscience. He was more concerned about an appeal to the heart and the soul of the American people, than in arguing his case in a court of law where the smallest factual details can make the difference between victory and defeat. A powerful illustration of this is his "I've Been to the Mountaintop sermon of April 3, 1968, at the Masonic Temple in Memphis, Tenn., where he had gone in support of the striking sanitation workers. The following day he was assassinated. His closing words in that sermon frame his own life in direct parallel to that of the biblical figure of Moses:

Are there profound differences of fact between the life of Moses and that of Martin Luther King? Of course there are. But King's appeal as a leader lay largely in his ability to strike the deeper chords of conscience and so to influence an entire nation. This is why he is remembered this weekend. It is also what every successful aspirant to the office of the presidency must remember. It's the "vision thing."  It's the ability to express in a few declarative sentences one's driving passions and purposes in life, and to do so in such a way that people can identify your own vision as their own.