The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office moved to clear a woman of manslaughter this afternoon, after finding that she was likely convicted solely on the strength of a coerced confession by notorious former detective Louis Scarcella. That confession, a review by prosecutors found, contradicted all the rest of the available evidence, and the 10 years defendant Vanessa Gathers spent in prison were in all likelihood unjust.

"After a thorough and fair review of the case by my Conviction Review Unit and the Independent Review Panel, I have concluded that, in the interest of justice, the manslaughter conviction obtained against Vanessa Gathers should not stand and that she should be given back her good name," District Attorney Ken Thompson said in a statement.

Thompson was elected in 2013 as a reformer, pledging to review questionable convictions obtained under six-term top prosecutor Charles Hynes. The subject of widespread complaints, Scarcella's work as a homicide detective came in for special scrutiny, and since 2013, eight people he helped put away have been freed or had their convictions erased, counting Gathers. Eighteen have been cleared in all, and the Conviction Review Unit has another 100 cases to look at, according to prosecutors.

The DA's Office said that Gathers's trouble started in November, 1991, when Michael Shaw, 71, called 911 to report he had been attacked and robbed in his Crown Heights apartment. He was hospitalized and survived, but went into a coma after a second surgery and died in the spring of 1992. Scarcella and others took over the case after his death, and prosecutors say he approached Gathers on the street that May and asked her about the robbery and beating, saying she fit the description of one of the women involved. They say she identified a possible suspect, and that Scarcella let her go.

It's unclear why, but five years later, having not arrested anyone for the crime, prosecutors say Scarcella questioned her again and obtained a confession. The recent review of the facts in the case found that "the complete lack of a coherent narrative in the defendant’s confession combined with apparent factual errors, amount to reasonable doubt in the validity of the confession itself," according to a DA's Office release.

Pro Publica writes:

According to her lawyers, Scarcella told Gathers he had a witness who said she was there the night Shaw was attacked. He said he had forensic evidence implicating her. He suggested that while she may not have struck the man, she certainly witnessed it. He told her that if she just admitted that she was present that night and she and her friend intended to rob, not hurt Shaw, she’d be free to go. If she did not, he’d put her in jail.

Finally, Gathers’ lawyers say, she consented to Scarcella’s version of the events. She signed a sworn statement that Scarcella wrote out for her, saying that she went with the neighborhood woman to Shaw’s apartment, saw the woman beat Shaw with a cane, and that she personally took $60 from his pocket. Immediately afterward, Scarcella and the prosecutor assigned to the case, Jonathan Roberts, turned on a video camera to record Gathers’ confession.

Gathers was arrested. Scarcella went back to find the woman Gathers had identified as the assailant. According to Gathers’ lawyers, the woman, when confronted, changed her story several times, eventually telling Scarcella and members of the district attorney’s office that she was there at the time of the robbery, but that only Gathers entered the apartment to rob him. That woman was never charged.

Gathers recanted at trial,her fingerprints weren't found at the scene, and no one placed her there, her lawyers said. Scarcella pulled his suspicion out of thin air, lawyer Lisa Cahill said in a statement.

"Detective Scarcella had no pretensions to being Sherlock Holmes," she said. "The search for truth seemed to have no role in his investigation."

Regarding the confession Thompson told Pix11 that Gathers said the crime occurred earlier than it did, said that Shaw was in a wheelchair, when he'd never had one, and that his family said he likely had no money on him the night of the attack.

Gathers is now 58. She was denied parole mid-sentence, possibly in part because she maintained her innocence. She is the first woman exonerated through Thompson's efforts.

Prosecutors and Gathers appeared in court this afternoon to formally ask that her conviction be vacated.

Scarcella's lawyer Alan Abramson maintained that "he did nothing wrong," and told Pro Publica that Brooklyn prosecutors share blame for any bad outcome: "Scarcella’s role was to bring witnesses to the District Attorney’s Office. It was their job to further investigate and make determinations as to whether those witnesses were credible and whether they had sufficient evidence to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt."

One prosecutor on the case, Hilda Mortensen, is still employed by the Brooklyn DA's Office. A spokesman would not make her available for interviews or address prosecutors' culpability on the record.