Two men convicted of killing civil rights leader Malcolm X in 1965 will be exonerated Thursday after a documentary on the assassination launched a nearly two-year investigation into the trial.
Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam will be cleared of their murder convictions 56 years after they were accused of the shooting, the New York Times reported. The inquiry found that the New York Police Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation withheld key evidence that would have cleared them during the initial trial.
The petition for investigation was filed after the documentary Who Killed Malcolm X? aired on Netflix in the beginning of 2020.
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The men each spent over 20 years in prison and were released on parole in the 1980s. Islam died in 2009, and Aziz, 83, is still alive.
Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus Vance Jr. and lawyers from the Innocence Project collaborated on the investigation.
“This points to the truth that law enforcement over history has often failed to live up to its responsibilities,” Vance told the New York Times. “These men did not get the justice that they deserved.”
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The investigation revealed that eyewitness testimony about one of the shooter’s appearances did not match Islam, but did match a man named William Bradley, who was already known to the FBI. A living witness corroborated Aziz’s alibi.
Three gunmen killed Malcolm X in Harlem, where he was about to deliver a speech on Feb. 21, 1965. One shooter, Mujahid Abdul Halim (also known as Talmadge Hayer), was arrested at the scene. Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler, and Islam, then known as Thomas 15X Johnson, were arrested in the following weeks.
All of the suspects were involved with the Nation of Islam, a black nationalist group from which Malcolm X had distanced himself the year before.
