YUMA — A man who spent more than 16 years on Arizona’s death row for the rape and murder of a 65-year-old Yuma woman has been resentenced to life in prison and could apply for parole in eight years.
Bobby Lee Tankersley, 56, was convicted of first-degree murder and sexual assault in 1993 for the 1991 murder of Thelma Younkin in a Yuma hotel where they both lived.
Prosecutors used circumstantial and forensic evidence to win the conviction. But the Arizona Supreme Court ordered new DNA tests after finding that the forensic dentist who testified against him had given unreliable testimony that helped convict an innocent man in a separate murder case.
After a series of hearings in Yuma County Superior Court, a judge ruled that the new DNA tests and other evidence were inconclusive and “insufficient to exonerate” Tankersley of the crime.
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But now-retired Judge Tom Thode wrote that while the new evidence didn’t warrant a new trial, it did cast doubt on the evidence originally used to convict him and he should be resentenced.
Prosecution and defense lawyers then agreed to a life sentence on the first-degree murder charge in return for the sexual assault conviction being overturned. Another judge resentenced Tankersley on Thursday.
The Arizona attorney general’s office also agreed not to argue against parole. Tankersley will be 64 years old when he becomes eligible for parole, and there are no victims in the case still living.
“It gets him off death row,” attorney Dan Maynard, who has been Tankersley’s lawyer for the past 10 years, said of the deal. “We thought it was a good result for him.”
Younkin was raped and strangled with her oxygen tube on Nov. 17, 1991, in the Yuma motel room where she was living. Investigators found bite marks on her face and breast, and her right earlobe had been bitten off.
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