GALVESTON — A Burleson County district judge on Wednesday set bail at $1 million for former death row inmate Anthony Graves, overriding a $50,000 bail set by a federal judge here.

District Judge Reva Towslee-Corbett offered no explanation in her two paragraph order for setting the bail amount for Graves, who the Texas Innocence Network and the Texas Innocence Project say is innocent.

U.S. District Judge Samuel Kent in November found that Graves was not a flight risk when he set bail at $50,000, requiring only a $5,000 cash payment. The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld Kent's decision Monday, but said an order by a state court would supplant the federal bail order.

Both Kent and the appeals court said the federal court could set bail because the district attorney's office for Burleson and Washington counties had failed to retry Graves within 120 days and had failed to seek a bond hearing in state court.

Towslee-Corbett's order means Graves will remain in the Burleson County Jail awaiting a retrial on capital murder charges unless his attorneys seek a bond reduction hearing. If Towslee-Corbett denies a bond reduction, his attorneys could go to a state appeals court.

"It has all the hallmarks of setting such an arbitrary amount that on its face it is so high that he couldn't possibly make it," said Michael Ware, a Fort Worth attorney on the board of the Texas Innocence Project.

A gag order prevents attorneys in the case from commenting. District Attorney Renee Ann Mueller has asked that her entire office be recused from the case following the recusal of Assistant District Attorney Joan Scroggins, who helped prosecute Graves in 1994 for the slaying of a grandmother and five children.

The appeals court in April overturned the conviction, ruling that the prosecution withheld key statements that could have aided the defense and allowed a prosecution witness to make false statements.

Ware said that it was unclear to him who sought the $1 million bail, because there was no hearing. The judge's order gives no indication of who may have sought the bond. Ware said the code of criminal procedure forbids using bail "as an instrument of oppression."

"On the face of it, it looks exactly like what the judge has done in this case," Ware said.

harvey.rice@chron.com