“This wasn’t a mere oversight,” said Deborah Francois, a lawyer for the men. Islam, who was released in 1987 and died in 2009 at age 74, would not have been compelled to spend decades fighting to clear their names. Aziz, 83, who was released in 1985, and Mr. Aziz’s alibi, further suggesting that he had not participated in the shooting but had been, as he said at the trial, at home nursing his wounded legs.Īltogether, the re-investigation found that had the new evidence been presented to a jury, it may well have led to acquittals. Investigators also interviewed a living witness, known only as J.M., who backed up Mr. And Police Department files revealed that a reporter for The New York Daily News received a call the morning of the shooting indicating that Malcolm X would be murdered.
Prosecutors’ notes indicate they failed to disclose the presence of undercover officers in the ballroom at the time of the shooting. documents included information that implicated other suspects and pointed away from Mr. Still, the evidence available was significant.Ī trove of F.B.I. Those failures, he said, could not be remedied, “but what we can do is acknowledge the error, the severity of the error.” Vance apologized on behalf of law enforcement, which he said had failed the families of the two men. Vance Jr., the Manhattan district attorney who is among the nation’s most prominent local prosecutors, recasts one of the most painful moments in modern American history.Īnd at a time when racism and discrimination in the criminal justice system are once again the focus of a national protest movement, it reveals a bitter truth: that two of the people convicted of killing Malcolm X - Black Muslim men hastily arrested and tried on shaky evidence - were themselves victims of the very discrimination and injustice that he denounced in language that has echoed across the decades. “God bless you, they’re exonerated,” he said in a quiet voice.
Halim, now 80, offered a simple response to the news about his co-defendants. At the trial, he confessed to the murder, but said and has maintained that the other two men were innocent.Īt his home in Brooklyn on Thursday, Mr. That man, Mujahid Abdul Halim, was also found guilty, and his conviction stands.
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