a decade after sending a man to death row, an Arizona judge granted him a new sentencing hearing

a decade after sending a man to death row, an Arizona judge granted him a new sentencing hearing based on inconclusive DNA tests and questions about the bitemark evidence used to convict him. On his last day before retiring from the bench, Yuma County Superior Court Judge Thomas Thode ruled that the new DNA tests and other evidence were "insufficient to exonerate" Bobby Lee Tankersley of the gruesome rape and murder of a 65-year-old woman. But the judge's ruling questioned the bitemark evidence he had used to sentence Tankersley to death for the 1991 slaying of Thelma Younkin, Tankersley's neighbor in a low-budget motel along what was then Yuma's skid row. "The DNA evidence standing alone does little if anything to exculpate the defendant from his guilt, but the inconclusive DNA as to critical bite marks may be argued to diminish the appearance of extreme brutality," Thode wrote. "The new DNA evidence also raises other questions as to what happened the night of the murder." A jury convicted Tankersley in 1993 of raping Younkin and strangling her.