Two men convicted in 1965 Malcolm X assassination set to be exonerated
Two men convicted in the assassination of Malcolm X more than five decades ago are set to finally be exonerated after professing their innocence since his murder, their lawyers and the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office said Wednesday.
Muhammad Aziz, 83, and the late Khalil Islam — who both spent decades in prison — will have their convictions tossed on Thursday, following a nearly two-year investigation into the 1965 killing of the civil rights leader.
“The events that brought us here should never have occurred,” Aziz said in a statement. “Those events were and are the result of a process that was corrupt to its core — one that is all too familiar — even in 2021.”
“While I do not need a court, prosecutors, or a piece of paper to tell me I am innocent, I am glad that my family, my friends, and the attorneys who have worked and supported me all these years are finally seeing the truth we have all known, officially recognized,” he said.
The renewed probe unearthed evidence of the two men’s innocence that had been hidden from the defense at their trial by the FBI and the NYPD, according to their attorneys, the Innocence Project and civil rights lawyer David Shanies.
The DA’s office publicly ackowledged it was reviewing the case in February 2020, in the wake of the Netflix documentary series “Who Killed Malcolm X?” — which followed historian Abdur-Rahman Muhammad’s quest for answers about the notorious murder.
Conspiracies have long swirled around the slaying of the controversial civil right’s era figure, who rose to fame as the fiery chief spokesman of the Nation of Islam.
Malcolm X split from the black nationalist organization about a year before he was gunned down on Feb. 21, 1965, just as he began a speech on stage at the Audubon Ballroom in Washington Heights. He was 39.
Aziz, Islam and a third man, Mujahid Abdul Halim — known at the time of the killing as Talmadge Hayer and also as Thomas Hagan — were found guilty of the murder in March 1966 and sentenced to life in prison a month later.
The Netflix series raised serious doubts about the guilt of Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler, and Islam, who went by Thomas 15X Johnson at the time.
Both Aziz and Islam denied they were involved in the assassination — and Hagan vouched for both of them, testifying that the men had “nothing to do with it,” according to the criminal justice group, Innocence Project.
The group, which represents Aziz, said last year that he still hoped to prove his innocence after being released in 1985 on parole.
No physical evidence linked Aziz or Islam the to murder or the crime scene, and both had alibis backed by testimony.
Hagan, who was paroled in 2010, admitted he was one of three gunman who shot Malcolm X, but said neither Aziz or Islam were part of the plot. He identified two others as his co-conspirators — but no one else was ever arrested.
“Thomas 15X Johnson and Norman 3X Butler had nothing to do with this crime whatsoever,” Hagan said in a sworn statement in 1977.
The re-investigation of the case uncovered a trove of FBI documents that pointed to other suspects, according to The New York Times.
Investigators also found and interviewed a still-living witness, identified only by the initials “J.M.,” who backed up Aziz’s alibi from his trial — that he was home nursing a leg wound when the shooting took place.
Other eyebrow-raising discoveries include that police knew a New York Daily News reporter had received a call earlier that day saying that Malcolm X would be killed, and that prosecutors were aware of, but didn’t disclose, that there had been undercover cops in the Upper Manhattan ballroom at the time.
“The assassination of Malcolm X was a historic event that demanded a scrupulous investigation and prosecution but, instead, produced one of the most blatant miscarriages of justice that I have ever seen,” Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, said in a statement.
Vanessa Potkin, director of post-conviction litigation for the group, said that the newly-discovered evidence not only invalidates the convictions of Aziz and Islam, but “also highlights the many unanswered questions about the government’s complicity in the assassination – a separate and important issue that, itself, demands further inquiry.”
Islam, who was released in 1987, died in 2009. Both he and Aziz worked for years to have their names cleared.
“I am an 83-year-old man who was victimized by the criminal justice system, and I do not know how many more years I have to be creative,” Aziz said in his statement on Wednesday.
“However, I hope the same system that was responsible for this travesty of justice also takes responsibility for the immeasurable harm it caused me.”
Aziz will be in Manhattan Supreme Court on Thursday when his lawyers and District Attorney Cyrus Vance will file a joint motion to vacate his conviction.
Shanies, the civil rights attorney, said it would mark “a significant and long overdue milestone” for Aziz and Islam, who will never get to see himself exonerated.
“These innocent men experienced the agony of decades in prison for a crime they did not commit. They were robbed of their freedom in the prime of their lives and branded the killers of a towering civil rights leader,” Shanies said in a statement.
“The tragic and unjust events of the past can never be erased but exonerating these men is a righteous and well-deserved affirmation of their true character.”
