2 men convicted in assassination of Malcolm X will be exonerated
NEW YORK — Two of the men found guilty of the assassination of Malcolm X are expected to have their convictions thrown out Thursday, the Manhattan district attorney and lawyers for the two men said.
The exoneration of the two men, Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam, represents a remarkable acknowledgment of errors made in a case of towering importance: the 1965 murder of one of America’s most influential Black leaders in the fight against racism.
A 22-month investigation conducted jointly by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office and attorneys for the two men found that prosecutors, the FBI and the New York City Police Department had withheld key evidence that, had it been turned over, would likely have led to the men’s acquittal.
The two men, known at the time of the killing as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, spent decades in prison for the murder, which took place Feb. 21, 1965, when three men opened fire inside the crowded Audubon Ballroom in Manhattan as Malcolm X was starting to speak.
Aziz, 83, was released in 1985, and Islam was released in 1987 and died in 2009.
But the case against them was questionable from the outset, and in the decades since historians and hobbyists have raised doubts about the official story.
In an interview, Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney, apologized on behalf of law enforcement, which he said had failed the families of the two men. Those failures, he said, could not be remedied, “but what we can do is acknowledge the error, the severity of the error.”
A trove of FBI documents included information that implicated other suspects and pointed away from Islam and Aziz.