Man to plead guilty
in sale of Maui skull

LOS ANGELES » In a deal with federal prosecutors, an Orange County man agreed to plead guilty to trying to sell the skull of a Hawaiian warrior over the Internet.

Jerry David Hasson, 25, of Huntington Beach, Calif., apparently took the 200-year-old skull from an excavation site near a beach on Maui 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, claiming the warrior 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 next week to one count of trafficking in an archaeological resource via interstate commerce, the documents showed.

Hasson will perform 600 hours of community service and publish an apology to the citizens 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 the skull was that of an adult female of Polynesian ancestry who was around 50 when she died.