New York prisoner Thomas Hagan has been paroled, four decades after taking part in the assassination of Malcolm X. Hagan, convicted in 1966, is the only man to have admitted his role in the 1965 shooting of the charismatic leader.
Hagan, who was known back then as Talmadge X Hayer, was convicted along with two other men, Muhammad Abdul Aziz and Kahlil Islam. Those two never admitted to being part of the murder (and Hagan backs them up), but they were sentenced to 20 years to life, as was Hagan. Aziz was paroled in 1985 and Islam was paroled in 1987.
Thomas Hagan has been on a work-release program since 1992 and has been allowed to spend five days a week at home while working full-time (according to reports he works in a fast food restaurant). He’d been denied parole fourteen times since he was first eligible in the 1980s, but now he’s out of jail for good. Read the news story (with quite a few details) here at CNN.
