Plea Deal for Man Who Tried to Sell Skull

In a deal with federal prosecutors, a Huntington Beach man has agreed to plead guilty to trying to sell what he said was the skull of a Hawaiian warrior over the Internet.

Jerry David Hasson apparently took the 200-year-old skull from an excavation site near a beach on Maui in 1969 when he was a teenager.

He was charged with violating the Archaeological Resources Protection Act.

Hasson offered the skull for sale on eBay in February 2004, saying it was that of a warrior who died on Maui in the 1790s.

A member of the native Hawaiian group Hui Malama I Na Kupuna O Hawaii Nei warned Hasson that selling the skull was a violation of federal law, and he pulled it off eBay, the U.S. attorney’s office said.

Hasson was then contacted by a Bureau of Indian Affairs undercover agent, who agreed to buy the skull for $2,500, prosecutors said.

In a plea deal detailed in court papers Tuesday, Hasson agreed to plead guilty in U.S. District Court in Los Angeles next week to one count of trafficking in an archeological resource via interstate commerce, the documents showed.

Hasson will perform 600 hours of community service and publish an apology to the people of Hawaii in three of the state’s newspapers.

The judge could also sentence Hasson to 18 months in prison and fine him $15,000.

An anthropologist at the University of Hawaii determined that the skull was that of a woman of Polynesian ancestry who was about 50 when she died.