New York’s criminal justice system took 55 years to admit that it was wrong brand Muhammad A. Aziz as one of Malcolm X’s killers.
Now, he and the city are wondering how much to pay for two decades in prison after being convicted of murder in March 1966, a year after assassins beheaded a towering figure. of the civil rights era.
Lawyers for Mr. Aziz, 84, filed a civil rights lawsuit on Thursday seeking $40 million from the city for its role in a notorious conviction that was vacated last year after the attorney’s office. Manhattan borough sorry in court for illegal conduct by the police and prosecutors who handled the case.
The complaint, filed in US District Court in Brooklyn, signals the breakdown of settlement negotiations between the city superintendent and Mr. Aziz. It was the beginning of what could be a protracted legal battle that his lawyers worry could outlast him. A co-defendant, Khalil Islam, died in 2009, a cloud still hangs over him.
“The convictions were ‘the result of outrageous wrongdoing by the government and a violation of its constitutional rights’,” said David Shanies, an attorney for Mr Aziz and Mr Islam’s estate. “These men and their families should not delay reparation for the grave injustices they have suffered.”
Mr. Aziz was a 26-year-old married father of six young children when he was convicted in 1966 of first-degree murder in the murder of Malcolm X, who was preparing to enter a new phase of his career. after a bitter breakdown. from the Nation of Islam, a Black nationalist group. Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam were condemned despite lack of corroborating evidence, conflicting statements from prosecution witnesses, and a third defendant stood as a witness to confess his role and make statements. two other men are innocent.
In court papers, Mr. Aziz’s attorneys allege the New York Police Department and the Manhattan district attorney’s office withheld evidence that supported his claim of innocence, using bearer witness procedures. the nature of suggesting and forcing the witness to give false statements – repeating the results of the investigation leads to his forgiveness. 24 former officers are named in the lawsuit.
“He spent 20 years, during what should have been the peak of his life, locked up in prison for a crime he didn’t commit,” the lawyers said in the papers. of the court. “The damage done to Mr. Aziz and his family is immense and irreparable.”
The man in charge of the calculation, Brad Lander, is still required to sign off on any agreements the Legal Department, which was reached by Sylvia Hinds-Radix, the group’s counsel, with Mr. Aziz following the lawsuit.
A spokesman for the executive’s office said it does not comment on active litigation; The Code is deferred to the mayor.
Mayor Eric Adams, in an emailed statement, said the city is reviewing the lawsuit.
“As someone who has fought for a fairer criminal justice system his entire career, I believe that overturning the convictions of Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam is the rightful outcome,” he said.
Mr Shanies filed a separate lawsuit on Thursday for the property of Mr Islam, who was last pardoned in similar proceedings last year. Islam, who was imprisoned for 22 years before being released, died in 2009 at the age of 74, still fighting to clear his name.
Mr. Aziz before File a lawsuit against New York State was settled for $5 million in April, according to a court filing. Mr Islam’s estate expects a similar deal.
In December, Mr. Shanies filed a notice of claim with the city on behalf of the men and their families. This step is required by state law to give the parties time to negotiate a settlement rather than fight it out in court. About a third of false conviction claims were resolved without a lawsuit between 2016 and 2021, according to compiler log.
Victims of debunked cases often sue for compensation, with payouts ranging from a few thousand dollars to tens of millions of dollars.
In May, City. agreed to pay 7 million dollars for Grant Williams, a studio employee of the rap group Wu-Tang Clan, who had been in prison 23 years earlier. he was deleted last year alleging that he killed a man in 1996 on Staten Island. Two other men, Amaury Villalobos and William Vasquez, received 31 million dollars in 2017 after a court overturned their convictions alleging that they started a fire in 1980 that killed a woman and her five children in Brooklyn.
In 2014, five men were exonerated in the 1989 beating and rape of a female runner in Central Park. agree to settle their lawsuit against the city for $41 million — about $1 million for each year they each spend in prison.
All supported by district attorney’s offices joining a nationwide prosecutors trend set units for the review of old cases. Like the original wrongful convictions, undoing them had a disproportionate impact on Black defendants, who were more likely to be convicted. victim of official misconduct.
The case of Mr. Aziz and Mr. Islam is exceptional in its historical importance, and for its admission of misconduct by one of the nation’s most powerful local prosecutors on behalf of his office. you and the Police Department.
But it’s also notable because serious historians of the law enforcement and civil rights era have asserted for decades that the convictions were a lapse of justice. Some go so far as to publicly name men they believe are the real killers.
Calls for Congress, the FBI and the Manhattan district attorney to reopen the case were ignored. In official records, the case is currently unresolved.
Former Manhattan district attorney, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., agreed to review the case in 2020 before the release of a Netflix documentary incorporating an alternative theory about the assassination.
Mr Vance, before stepping down late last year, stood before dozens of spectators in the court where the men were convicted and asked a judge to vacate the verdict. He apologized on behalf of police and prosecutors “for the grave, unacceptable violations of the law and the public trust.”
