Instead, the 27-year-old from the Chattanooga area is facing more than 70 years in federal prison after pleading guilty in August to six federal weapons charges. Schertz is expected to be sentenced in November.

Officials say that Schertz, a former member of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, was at a March Klan event in Dunlap, Tenn., when he began talking to a person who turned out to be a government informant. Schertz said he knew how to make pipe bombs and could teach the informant as well. Schertz demonstrated how to attach the bombs to cars before selling the informant two bombs that he expected would be used to attack Haitians in Florida.

The following month, the informant set up another deal with Schertz to sell five pipe bombs that were to be used to attack Mexican agricultural workers on a bus to Florida. This time, the man Schertz sold the bombs to was an undercover agent with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who accompanied the informant.

Schertz was arrested in May and later pleaded guilty.

Schertz's former Klan boss, White Knights Imperial Wizard Billy Jeffery, claimed to The Associated Press that Schertz had been "banished" from the Klan in mid-May for disobedience that was not related to the bomb plot.