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Muhammad Aziz, 84, had sought $40 million after serving about
two decades in prison and more than 55 years after being wrongly
blamed in the case that raised questions about racism in the
criminal justice system. Aziz is married and has six children.
Khalil Islam, who died in 2009 at age 74, also spent more than
20 years in prison and was exonerated in November 2021. His
estate had also filed a $40 million suit.
The city has agreed to pay $26 million and the state will pay
$10 million, attorney David Shanies told Reuters. The survivor
and the man's estate will split the settlement.
"Muhammad Aziz, Khalil Islam, and their families deserve this
for their suffering," Shanies said. "They suffered a lifetime
under the cloud of wrongly being accused of killing a civil
rights leader."
Nick Paolucci, a spokesman for the New York City Law Department,
told the New York Times on Sunday that, "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."
A representative for the state attorney general's office was not
immediately available for comment.
Malcolm X became prominent as the voice of the Nation of Islam,
which espoused Black separatism, before leaving the organization
in 1964 and angering some of its followers. He was shot dead at
age 39 in February 1965 while preparing to speak at New York's
Audubon Ballroom.
A third man, Mujahid Halim, was also convicted for the shooting.
He testified that Aziz and Islam were innocent. Halim was
paroled in 2010.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta; editing by Donna Bryson and
Sandra Maler)
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