NYC to Pay $36M to Two Men Wrongly Convicted of Killing Malcolm X in Harlem Assassination
By: Hadassa Kalatizadeh
New York City has agreed to settle the cases of the two men exonerated in the 1965 killing of Malcolm X.
As reported by the NY Times, the city will pay a total of $36 million to Mr. Muhammad A. Aziz and Mr. Khalil Islam, the two men who had been wrongly accused of the most notorious murder of the civil rights era. Each of the men spent 20 years in jail, following their speedy arrests and the trial– which is said to have relied on questionable evidence. Last November, the two men were exonerated following a 22-month investigation by the office of former Manhattan District Attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr. The investigation found that prosecutors, together with the FBI and NYPD, had withheld evidence that may likely have led the two defendants to be acquitted at the trial.
“This settlement brings some measure of justice to individuals who spent decades in prison and bore the stigma of being falsely accused of murdering an iconic figure,” Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the New York City Law Department, said in a statement. “Based on our review, this office stands by the opinion of former Manhattan district attorney Vance who stated, based on his investigation, that ‘there is one ultimate conclusion: Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam were wrongfully convicted of this crime,’” Mr. Paolucci added.
David B. Shanies, a lawyer for the two men, said the settlement will be split evenly between Mr. Aziz, 84, who was released from prison in 1985; and the estate of Mr. Islam, who was released in 1987 but who died in 2009 at age 74. “It’s tragic that he died never knowing that his name would be cleared,” Mr. Shanies commented. “So, given the importance of the case and the immense length of time that this wrongful conviction lingered, it was important for the government to act quickly to do what was within its power to make it right.” The lawsuits were filed just four months ago, and so the settlement is considered speedy, despite being 57 years after the conviction. Mr. Shanies added that the state of New York also reached separate $5 million settlements payable to each of the two men, bringing the total awarded amount to $36 million.
“This was an exoneration in plain sight. Historians had long determined that these two men were wrongly convicted,” said Barry Scheck, the co-founder of the Innocence Project, who also worked on the case with the men’s lawyers. “This case should have been overturned decades ago,” added Mr. Scheck.
As per the Times, in recent years, NYC has paid out millions to settle lawsuits involving wrongful conviction and incarceration. Most notably, in 2014, the city paid $41 million to five men whose convictions were overturned in the savage beating and rape of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989. That settlement reflected a payment of approximately $1 million to each man, per year spent in prison.
