NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- Two of the three men convicted in the assassination of Malcolm X were cleared Thursday in a Manhattan courtroom after insisting on their innocence since the 1965 killing of one of the United States’ most formidable fighters for civil rights.
A nearly two-year-long re-investigation found that authorities withheld evidence favorable to the defense in the trial of Muhammad Aziz, now 83, and the late Khalil Islam, said their attorneys, the Innocence Project and civil rights lawyer David Shanies.
Aziz called his conviction “the result of a process that was corrupt to its core — one that is all too familiar” even today.
“I do not need a court, prosecutors or a piece of paper to tell me I am innocent,” he said in a statement. But he said he was glad his family, friends and lawyers would get to see “the truth we have all known, officially recognized.”
He urged the criminal justice system to “take responsibility for the immeasurable harm it caused me.”
Vance said he was moving to vacate the convictions because of "newly discovered evidence and the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence.”
“I apologize for what were serious, unacceptable violations of law and the public trust,” said Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance Jr., who jointly moved to dismiss the case with Aziz's counsel.
"The NYPD and FBI covered up a tremendous amount,” said Aziz’s attorney David Shaines. “It’s tragic [Islam] never lived to see the day of his exoneration.”
"The damage done to them and their families by this wrongful conviction is immeasurable," added Innocence Project co-founder Barry Scheck.
A large round of applause broke out when a judge announced the exonerations, while Aziz did not appear to react much, albeit while wearing a mask.
Malcolm X rose to fame as the Nation of Islam’s chief spokesperson, proclaiming the Black Muslim organization’s message at the time: racial separatism as a road to self-actualization. He famously urged Black people to claim civil rights “by any means necessary” and referred to white people as “blue-eyed devils,” and he later denounced racism.
About a year before his death, he split from the Nation of Islam and later made a pilgrimage to Mecca, returning with a new view of the potential for racial unity. Some in the Nation of Islam saw him as a traitor.
Aziz, Islam and a third man, Mujahid Abdul Halim — also known as Talmadge Hayer and Thomas Hagan — were convicted of murder in March 1966 and sentenced to life in prison.
Hagan said he was one of three gunmen who shot Malcolm X, but he testified that neither Aziz nor Islam was involved. The two, then known as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, maintained throughout that they were innocent and offered alibis at their 1966 trial. No physical evidence linked them to the crime.
“Thomas 15 Johnson and Norman 3X Butler had nothing to do with this crime whatsoever,” Hagan said in a sworn statement in 1977.
According to The New York Times, the re-investigation found the FBI had documents that pointed to other suspects, and a still-living witness supported Aziz’s alibi — that he was at home with a leg injury at the time of the shooting.
The witness, whom authorities had never interviewed before and was identified only by the initials “J.M.,” said he spoke to Aziz on the latter’s home phone the day of the killing, the newspaper said.
Also, the review found that prosecutors knew about but didn’t disclose that undercover officers were in the ballroom when the gunfire erupted, and police knew that someone had called the Daily News of New York earlier that day saying that Malcolm X would be killed.
The New York Police Department and the FBI said Wednesday that they had cooperated fully with the re-investigation, and they declined to comment further.
Aziz was released in 1985. Islam was released two years later and died in 2009. Both continued to press to clear their names.
“I did not kill Malcolm X,” Aziz said at a news conference in 1998, after the Nation of Islam tapped him to run the mosque where the slain leader had preached.