In April 1996, Roeder was arrested in Topeka after Shawnee County sheriff's deputies stopped him for not having a proper license plate. In his car, officers said they found ammunition, a blasting cap, a fuse cord, a one-pound can of gunpowder and two 9-volt batteries, with one connected to a switch that could have been used to trigger a bomb.
Jim Jimerson, supervisor of the Kansas City ATF's bomb and arson unit, worked on the case.
"There wasn't enough there to blow up a building," Jimerson said at the time, but he said it could make several powerful pipe bombs.
Roeder, who then lived in Silver Lake, was stopped because he had an improper license plate that read "Sovereign private property. Immunity declared by law. Non-commercial American." Authorities said the plate was typical of those used by Freemen.
Roeder was arraigned on one count of criminal use of explosives and misdemeanor charges of driving on a suspended license, failure to carry a Kansas registration and failure to carry liability insurance.
He was found guilty and sentenced in June 1996 to 24 months of probation with intensive supervision and ordered to dissociate himself from anti-government groups that advocated violence.
But in December 1997, his probation ended six months early when the Kansas Court of Appeals overturned his conviction. The court held that evidence against Roeder was seized by authorities during an illegal search of his car.