The state and city of New York have agreed to pay a man and the family of his late co-defendant $36 million for their wrongful convictions in the 1965 assassination of civil rights leader Malcolm X.
New York City will pay $26 million to Muhammad A. Aziz and the estate of Khalil Islam to compensate them for their wrongful murder convictions in 1966, according to the city’s legal office and an attorney for the men. The sum will be divided equally between Aziz and Islam’s estate, said the lawyer, David Shanies, per Washington Post.
Per a report from the Associated Press citing comments from attorney David Shanies, who represented Muhammad Aziz and the estate of the late Khalil Islam, the settlement will see New York City paying $26 million while the state of New York will pay $10 million.
In November 2021, both men were exonerated following the discovery of what was then described as “new evidence” in the case. Previously, Aziz had had been released on parole back in 1985, while Islam was paroled in 1987. In 2009, Islam died at the age of 74.
New York state also has agreed to pay $5 million to Aziz and the same sum to Islam’s estate, according to Shanies and court records, per Complex.
“These settlements acknowledge Muhammad Aziz and Khalil Islam’s innocence, and unconscionable violations of the law by police and prosecutors sworn to uphold it,” Shanies said in an email. “The damage caused by wrongful convictions can never be undone, but we owe it to history and to the people whose lives were destroyed to face the truth and try to make amends.”
The New York attorney general’s office did not respond to a message seeking comment.
The payouts serve as another public mea culpa for the combined 42 years that Aziz, 84, and Islam, who died in 2009, served in prison before prosecutors admitted to making a tragic mistake. The pair was exonerated in November after a jury previously found them guilty of participating in Malcolm X’s 1965 assassination on the stage of Manhattan’s Audubon Ballroom.
Vanessa Potkin, the director of special litigation at the nonprofit Innocence Project, which contributed to the effort to vacate, said at the time that it took five decades of research and activism for "wrongful convictions to be officially acknowledged and rectified."
But she suggested the work had just begun in getting to the bottom of the government's possible culpability and alleged complicity in the matter. It "demands further inquiry," Potkin said.
Sources: Washington Post,NBC News,Complex
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