Two men convicted of role in Malcolm X assassination to be exonerated on Thursday

After a Netflix documentary last year raised doubts about his guilt and that of another man convicted in the killing, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. launched a review of the case.

November 17, 2021

Manhattan prosecutors on Thursday will move to vacate the convictions of two men who served decades in prison for their alleged role in the assassination of civil rights icon Malcolm X, officials involved in the case said, the Washington Post reports.

Muhammad A. Aziz, who previously went by the name Norman 3X Butler, was one of three men convicted in the hit on Malcom X’s life at the Audubon Ballroom in Upper Manhattan in 1965. He was released from prison in 1985, and has long maintained his innocence.

After a Netflix documentary last year raised doubts about his guilt and that of another man convicted in the killing, the office of Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr. launched a review of the case.

Vance’s office and the Innocence Project, which is part of Aziz’s legal team, announced on Wednesday that two men would be exonerated on Thursday afternoon in New York State Supreme Court. While the announcement did not name the men, two people familiar with proceedings identified one of them as Aziz.