A sentencing hearing was set for Wednesday afternoon in the matter of a snakes and bomb case, but the sentencing never happened.

At the hearing, defendant Douglas G. Feist, 28, of Bismarck, told the judge he'd made a "horrible mistake" in purchasing poisonous snakes over the Internet, which were then kept in friend Andrew Greff's Bismarck apartment. Two of the snakes are among the deadliest in the world, according to authorities.

He said he had no excuse, was sorry for everything, and his attorney submitted documentation from a Bible school teacher to show Feist was now an active member of his church. And Feist then entered a guilty plea to misdemeanor reckless endangerment.

That guilty plea, with the other guilty plea he had entered in another case - helping to build a pipe bomb that resulted in blowing apart Greff's left arm in July 2004 - were then presented as part of a plea bargain at Wednesday's hearing.

But South Central District Court Judge Sonna Anderson declined to accept the package.

She told Feist she would accept a plea bargain on the snake case, which proposed to give Feist a one-year sentence with all but six months suspended for misdemeanor reckless endangerment. But she wouldn't accept a plea bargain on the other case, which would have been a two-year sentence with all but six months suspended for felony possession of an explosive device.

Anderson told Feist he had a supportive family, had been sent to a couple of camp settings in the past, but that the help he'd been given had not changed his behavior and he was still putting people in danger.

Feist then withdrew his guilty pleas and his attorney, Ralph Vinje, told Anderson that Feist would take both cases to trial.

It was in July 2004 that Bismarck police searched Greff's apartment at 306 N. 13th St. and found an East African green mamba, a death adder, an albino monocle cobra and a yellow-bellied racer.

Authorities found out about the poisonous snakes after a Bismarck State College biology instructor called the police department after Feist had taken the green mamba to the college to be identified.

Terry Lincoln, director of Bismarck's zoo, said in a past interview that he was called to help transport the animals to the zoo for safe-keeping. Lincoln and the officers duct-taped the covers of the snake containers shut and loaded them into a pickup.

According to Julie Lawyer, an assistant state's attorney for Burleigh County, the closest antivenin is in South Dakota and couldn't be delivered fast enough to help someone who was bitten.

The pipe bomb situation happened after Feist and Greff, 21, constructed the pipe bomb for the Fourth of July to make a "big bang," Feist wrote in a statement given to Anderson.

Feist wrote that he didn't intend for the bomb to hurt anyone, told Greff not to set it off and wasn't around at the time of the explosion.

Greff lost his left arm when he set off the bomb July 10 at Kimball Bottoms, about 10 miles south of Bismarck. He drove himself to a Bismarck hospital emergency room.

Vinje told Anderson on Wednesday that Feist had told Greff to throw the pipe bomb in the garbage, that it was dangerous and that Feist thought it had been thrown in the river.

Regarding the snakes, Feist told Anderson that the snakes were for display purposes only, not to be handled. He said the company they bought them from reassured them the snakes' bite wouldn't kill anyone - that a bite would "knock you over" but wouldn't kill you.

He said he also had done research, contacting the Game and Fish Department, which told him that because they were non-native animals that no permit was required.