Sentencing for white supremacist Gilbert postponed until April 6

Sentencing for a Seattle man who was once imprisoned in a plot to blow up Martin Luther King Jr. was delayed this morning.

The attorney for Keith Gilbert, convicted of several federal weapons charges, requested the delay because he hadn't had a chance to review the government's sentencing memorandum, which had been filed Thursday. U.S. District Court Judge Marsha Pechman rescheduled the sentencing for April 6.

Gilbert, who most recently worked as a property manager for two Roosevelt neighborhood landlords, was convicted late last year of selling illegal weapons to an informant. Prosecutors also contended that Gilbert illegally possessed 74 weapons, including a weapon that was stolen from the military and another with a missing serial number, and that Gilbert and a co-defendant manufactured machine guns.

In addition, prosecutors said, Gilbert had stockpiled more than 20,000 rounds of ammunition.

"Gilbert has a history of violence — including violence involving firearms and explosives — and extremism that suggests that Gilbert's possession of firearms and his distribution of firearms to other presumably like-minded individuals is of gravest concern," prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.

Gilbert claims that he is not a white supremacist and not a member of a racist organization.

But prosecutors say his previous convictions show otherwise.

According to court documents, Gilbert was arrested in 1965 and convicted of possessing 1,400 pounds of stolen dynamite. Police and prosecutors claimed that Gilbert was among a group that intended to blow up a Hollywood, Calif., stage where late civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was scheduled to make a speech.

He was also convicted of shooting a motorist after making insulting remarks about the other person's race.

After serving five years in prison, Gilbert moved to Idaho and struck up a relationship with Aryan Nations leader Richard Butler. The two later had a falling-out and Gilbert said he never joined the Aryan Nations.

He was at one point an admitted member of the Minutemen and he later founded the Socialist Nationalist Aryan People's Party, which considered Adolf Hitler a prophet and tried to recruit members from Butler's organization.

In the mid-1980s Gilbert was convicted in Idaho of interfering with housing rights through force or threat. According to a federal court opinion, Gilbert sent hate mail to an adoption agency that placed black children with white families. Later, Gilbert nearly ran down one of the adopted children with his car and sicced his St. Bernard on another, according to a federal indictment.

Gilbert claimed that the hate mail was protected speech, but 9th Circuit Court of Appeals disagreed, saying the letter was clearly a threat.

"Evidence at Gilbert's trial showed that he was a racist and a bigot, that he believed White Aryans should not be in contact with any other race, that he believed children born to parents of differing races were not human, and that he embraced some Nazi doctrine," the opinion said.

Gilbert later moved into the Roosevelt neighborhood and became the property manager for a number of rental homes owned by well-known Roosevelt-area landlords Hugh and Drake "Ducky" Sisley.

Neighbors and former tenants said Gilbert was a bully who was known for his strong-arm tactics during evictions and other actions related to the rental properties.