NEW YORK — A judge dismissed the convictions of two of the three men found guilty of killing Malcolm X, after Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. acknowledged deep flaws in the decades-old prosecution and said “it was clear these men did not receive a fair trial.”
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With 83-year-old Muhammad A. Aziz sitting at the next table in New York Supreme Court Justice Ellen Biben’s courtroom, Vance said the convictions of him and the late Khalil Islam — both of whom served 20 years in prison — were “wrongful” and asked for them to be vacated. He said there was no way to retry the legendary murder case with most witnesses dead and with major pieces of evidence missing from the record.
Vance’s office joined attorneys for Aziz and Islam’s family in filing the motion seeking to overturn the first-degree murder convictions.
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Barry Scheck, an attorney who is part of Aziz’s legal team, chastised the criminal justice system for failing to clear the men’s names sooner, given conflicting eyewitness testimony, withheld documents and other exculpatory evidence exposed by historians, journalists and filmmakers.
“The damage done to these men and their families by this wrongful conviction is immeasurable,” he said. “This has been an exoneration in plain sight for decades.”
Read the motion seeking to overturn the convictions of Aziz and Islam
Aziz, wearing a dark green suit and a white k95 mask, stood and read a brief statement in front of the judge and dozens of spectators. While he did not “need this court these prosecutors or a piece of paper to tell me I’m innocent,” he said, he was glad to hear it officially recognized in front of his family.
“Those events were and are a result of a process that was corrupt in this court, one that is all too familiar to Black people in 2021,” Aziz said.
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Before ruling, Biben said: “there can be no question this is a case that cries out for fundamental justice.”
“To Mr. Aziz and your family, and to the family or Mr. Islam, I regret that this court cannot fully undo the serious miscarriages of justice in this case and give you back the many years that were lost,” the judge added.
Moments later, she vacated the convictions and dismissed the case, to applause from those in the courtroom.
In their motion, prosecutors cited conflicting eyewitness testimony, the alibis that Aziz and Islam offered, questions about photo lineups and the withholding of relevant documents in saying they could not longer stand by the two convictions.
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They also noted that the deaths of relevant witnesses and the failure to keep evidence from decades ago made it impossible to determine that Aziz and Islam were “actually innocent.”
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“We are left only with the trial record, which is inadequate to assess the certainty and strength of each eyewitness,” the 43-page filing says. “Most of the relevant physical evidence is not available for informative forensic testing.”
Malcolm X: A quick guide to what you need to know about his life and death
Research for a recent Netflix docuseries, “Who killed Malcolm X?”, helped convince prosecutors to take a new look at the case. The series examined whether Nation of Islam members from Newark, rather than Aziz and Islam, were to blame for Malcom X’s murder.
Aziz and Islam, who at the time were known as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, respectively, were members of a Nation of Islam mosque in Harlem. Both denied being at the Audubon Ballroom the day Malcolm X was killed or having anything to do with the assassination.
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A third man convicted in the case, Talmadge Hayer, who goes by Mujahid Abdul Halim, was based in Newark and has been saying for decades that Aziz and Islam are innocent. Years ago, he signed an affidavit naming his associates in the assassination plot, who he said were also from a mosque in Newark.
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Malcom X was gunned down by three shooters at the now-shuttered ballroom at W. 165th St. and Broadway around 3 p.m. on Feb. 21, 1965. His speech, in front of a large crowd of devotees, followed a contentious split between the Malcolm and the Nation of Islam organization and its founder Elijah Muhammad.
Did a Black undercover detective unwittingly aid Malcolm X’s assassination?
Vance’s office did not establish a motive for the killing as part of its probe, but noted in its court filing that there was hostility between Malcom X and his former group.
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At trial, prosecutors presented a theory that Aziz and Halim caused a diversion while Islam approached the stage with a twelve-gauge shotgun, firing two rounds. Aziz and Halim then allegedly followed his lead, approaching the stage and letting off rounds from pistols that they carried, prosecutors argued at the December 1965 proceeding.
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Halim, who was shot and wounded during the attack, was arrested outside the ballroom. Aziz and Islam were taken into custody later based on eyewitness accounts that prosecutors now say were shoddy, conflicting and unreliable. In addition, there was no surviving record of police lineups or photo arrays to support the accounts.
“No physical evidence tied Aziz or Islam to the murder or crime scene,” according to the motions. “There was no evidence that Aziz or Islam had any connection to Halim, or had ever met him.”
Years after the murder, it was revealed that an undercover NYPD officer who had infiltrated Malcolm X’s inner circle was present for the murder. But his role was kept a secret from prosecutors, and he was never interviewed. The jury at the trial did not have the benefit of hearing his account.
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FBI records examined during the re-investigation pointed the possibility of another shotgun suspect — a man with a markedly different physical description from Islam’s. The Netflix series identified Newark resident and mosque member William Bradley, who is now deceased, as a person potentially involved.
Bradley was one of the four alleged accomplices listed in Halim’s affidavit.
“The significance of the newly discovered FBI and NYPD reports containing the names of people identified by known sources as being the killer also cannot be discounted,” the motion says.
At the time of the trial, the defense lawyers for Aziz and Islam did not know about these records or other exculpatory items that should have been in the district attorney’s possession and turned over to the defense, Vance’s office concluded.
This is a developing story. It will be updated.
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