Graves Released and Re-Arrested

Taken from Burleson Co. to Galveston Dec. 5, where he was freed on a federal court-set $50K bond, former death row inmate Anthony Graves was then immediately re-arrested and transported back to Burleson Co. because he didn’t have the $100K necessary for freedom on a $1 million state bond, set late last month by state District Judge Reva Towslee Corbett.

It was another stunning twist to the ongoing legal drama as the state tries to keep Graves behind bars pending a promised retrial for the 1992 multiple murder of six people – four of them children – inside a home that officials say was set ablaze in order to cover the grisly deaths. Graves has maintained his innocence and in March the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his conviction, ruling that prosecutors had withheld crucial evidence from Graves’ defense that could’ve changed the outcome of the trial.

Although U.S. Magistrate Judge John Froeschner agreed that Towslee Corbett’s bond, which she set late last month without first holding any evidentiary hearing, was “excessive and oppressive,” reports the Houston Chronicle, he nonetheless said he was “powerless” to interfere and to thwart the state from taking Graves back into custody in lieu of the money needed to post the state bond.

The fight to secure Graves’ release on bond heated up last month when the 5th Circuit ruled that Towslee Corbett must either hold a hearing and set a new bond or allow Graves to be freed pursuant to the $50K bond Froeschner previously set, and imposed a Jan. 4 deadline for the state to act. On Dec. 20, Towslee Corbett did just that, setting the $1 million bond that Graves’ attorneys say is egregious and a non-too-thinly veiled attempt to thwart the Constitutional ban on excessive bail and the Fourteenth Amendment’s promise of due process.

When Froeschner issued a bench warrant Dec. 29, for the purpose of bringing Graves back to Galveston for a hearing on the federal bond, it appeared that the feds had had enough of the state’s stalling and sidestepping of the federal court rulings; many court watchers expected Graves would be freed Jan. 5 and that Towslee Corbett’s bond setting would become moot. However, just after Graves’ attorneys posted the $5K on Froeschner’s bond, Graves was taken into custody again and spirited back to the Burleson Co. jail. The move angered many Graves case insiders who say that Froeschner had the power to tell the state to stand down, but simply did not exercise that option. According to the Houston daily, Froeschner said simply that while he agreed that Towslee Corbett’s bond “sounds pretty excessive and pretty oppressive” that was “the business of the state court” and not the federal bench.

Graves will be back in court Jan. 22, in Towslee Corbett’s courtroom, for a hearing to determine whether the $1 million bail is, in fact, excessive. If Towslee Corbett declines to lower Graves’ bond, he will have to appeal the case back up through the state court, to the Court of Criminal Appeals, before the issue could land back in front of the federal bench.

In other Graves case news, Towslee Corbett on Jan. 4 named Assistant Attorney General Julie Ann Stone as the prosecutor Pro Tem for the Graves case, until another special prosecutor can be appointed. Burleson Co. District Attorney Renee Mueller recused her entire office from handling Graves’ retrial, after Towslee Corbett in December ruled that one Burleson Assistant DA, Joan Scroggins, who was part of the original Graves prosecution team back in 1994, should be barred from participating in the retrial.