Two of the men found guilty of Malcolm X’s murder are expected to have their convictions canceled this Thursday, according to the Manhattan Attorney General and lawyers for the convicts. The ruling rewrites the official story of one of the most famous murders of the civil rights era of America’s black population.
The acquittal of the two men, Muhammad A. Aziz and Khalil Islam, represents a remarkable recognition of the grave mistakes made in the 1965 assassination of one of America’s most influential black leaders in the fight against racism.
A 22-month investigation conducted by the Manhattan Public Prosecutor’s Office in conjunction with attorneys for the two men concluded that prosecutors and two of the country’s top law enforcement agencies — the FBI and the New York City Police Department — withheld evidence. which, had they been presented, would likely have led to the condemned’s acquittal.
The men, known at the time of the crime as Norman 3X Butler and Thomas 15X Johnson, spent decades in prison for the crime, which occurred on February 21, 1965, when three men opened fire on a packed ballroom, the Audubon, in Manhattan. , after Malcolm X started speaking.
But the case against them was challenged from the start, and in the decades that have passed historians and onlookers have raised doubts about official history.
The review, which came after an explosive documentary about the murder and a new biography renewed interest in the case, did not identify who prosecutors now believe actually killed Malcolm X, and those who were involved before but never arrested are now dead.
It also failed to uncover a government or police conspiracy to kill the black leader, and left unanswered questions about how and why the police and federal government failed to prevent the assassination.
But the admission by Cyrus Vance Jr., the Manhattan District Attorney who is one of the top US local district attorneys, re-enacts one of the most painful moments in American history.
And, 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 Malcolm X’s death — Muslim black men havetily arrested and tried with flimsy evidence—they were victims of the very discrimination and injustice he denounced in language that echoed through the decades.
In an interview, Vance apologized on behalf of police, which he said failed to the families of the two convicts. These failures, he said, could not be remedied, “but what we can do is recognize the error, the seriousness of the error.”
Vance’s new investigation, conducted with the Innocence Project and the office of civil rights lawyer David Shanies, faced serious obstacles. Many of those involved in the murder case, including witnesses, investigators and lawyers, as well as other potential suspects, have long since died. Key documents have been lost and physical evidence such as murder weapons are no longer available for testing.
“This points to the truth that justice throughout history has often failed to fulfill its responsibilities,” said Vance. “These men did not receive the justice they deserved.”
But the existing evidence was significant.
A set of FBI documents included information implicating suspects other than Aziz and Islam. Prosecutors’ notes indicate that they failed to reveal the presence of plainclothes officers in the ballroom at the time of the shooting. And police department files reveal that a reporter for The New York Daily News received a phone call the morning of the crime indicating that Malcolm X would be murdered.
Investigators also interviewed a living witness, known only as JM, who upheld Aziz’s alibi, further suggesting that he was not involved in the shooting and was at home, as he said at the trial, tending to his injured legs.
Overall, the investigation concluded that had the new evidence been presented to the jury, it could have led to their acquittal. And Aziz, now 83, who was released in 1985, and Islam, who was released in 1987 and died in 2009, would not have been forced to spend decades struggling to clear their names.
“This was not a simple oversight,” said Deborah Francois, the men’s lawyer. “It was the product of extreme and gross official misconduct.”
The murder
The murder took place on a sunny February day, at the start of what would be a new phase in Malcolm X’s career as a civil rights leader.
One suspect, Mujahid Abdul Halim, was detained in the ballroom after being shot in the leg. Aziz, then known as Norman 3X Butler, was arrested five days later, and Islam, known as Thomas 15X Johnson, five days later. Within a week, the three, members of the Nation of Islam Muslim order, had been charged with murder.
At the trial in 1966, prosecutors named Islam, who had been Malcolm X’s driver, as the murderer who fired the fatal shot. Halim and Aziz reportedly fired their pistols soon after. Ten eyewitnesses said they saw Islam, Aziz or both.
But witness testimony was contradictory, and no physical evidence linked Aziz or Islam to the murder, or even the crime scene. Both had credible alibis, supported by testimony from their wives and friends.
And when Halim, aka Talmadge Hayer, testified for the second time at trial and confessed, he insisted that the other two defendants were innocent.
On March 11, 1966, the three were found guilty and, a month later, sentenced to life in prison.
Even so, the evidence pointed to another theory for the case.
Reinvestigating or case
Some of the evidence that seemed to exonerate Aziz and Islam emerged during his trial, but as key information was withheld by authorities its importance only became clear later.
A defense witness, Ernest Greene, claimed he had seen the man with the pistol and described him as dark-skinned, short and wearing a “deep” beard — which is not in keeping with Islam, which was put on paper by prosecutors, which was fair, thin and beardless.
But Greene’s description matched another man whose name the jurors didn’t hear: William Bradley, a member of the same Nation of Islam mosque in Newark, New Jersey, as Halim. Bradley was a propagator of the Nation of Islam, which Malcolm X had joined in 1952 and promoted incessantly for 12 years before the virulent rupture in the year before the assassination.
He was less than six feet tall, weighed 82 kilos and had brown skin. He had been a member of the Marine Corps Machine Gun Squad, and his criminal record included a charge of unlawful possession of a weapon.
Bradley’s description was in FBI files at the time, and Halim even identified him as one of the killers. Authorities were aware that the Nation of Islam was targeting Malcolm X; a week before the murder, his home was the target of arson bombs while he was sleeping with his wife and daughters.
But it took years for the Bradley connection to clear up, while a series of amateur investigators —journalists, historians, biographers and others— took care of the case.
One of the most prominent of these civilians was Abdur-Rahman Muhammad, who ran a documentary series on Netflix earlier last year that once again presented the thesis of the two men’s innocence — and the guilt of others. At the launch of the series, Vance announced that he would reopen the case.
Vance’s investigators, working with lawyers for Islam and Aziz, examined the evidence that had been publicly exposed and analyzed, including the FBI file on Bradley. (The latter, who changed his name to Al-Mustafa Shabazz, died in 2018 and his lawyer denied that he was involved in the murder.)
The FBI files contained a report stating that New York authorities had not been informed that Bradley was a suspect, as well as a second-hand report by an informant that Bradley was the murderer with the pistol.
The group also interviewed a new witness and reviewed stacks of records: public statements, prosecution files, court transcripts and documents generated during the initial investigation, jury proceedings, the trial, and post-conviction appeals.
One of the main weaknesses of the government’s thesis, according to the review, was Halim’s confession, in which he acquitted the other defendants.
Although the three defendants were part of the Nation of Islam, prosecutors drew no connection between Halim, who attended the Newark Mosque and said the co-authors of the crime were from New Jersey, and Islam and Aziz, who attended the Nation’s Mosque in Newark Harlem, New York. Several defense witnesses said Aziz and Islam were at home at the time of the murder.
Although most of the people the review committee tried to interview were already dead, a witness who initially appeared at a documentary screening gave a report that appeared to confirm Aziz’s alibi and had never been heard by authorities.
The witness, identified as JM, said he was handling the phone at the Nation’s mosque in Harlem on the day Malcolm X was killed, when Aziz called and asked to speak to the mosque captain. They hung up while JM went to find the captain; then JM called Aziz on his home phone, and Aziz answered.
Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves
.
