Posted on: Tuesday, May 24, 2005

Skull seller fined, told to apologize

Associated Press

LOS ANGELES — A man who tried to sell the 200-year-old skull of a Native Hawaiian warrior on eBay was sentenced yesterday to 600 hours of community service and ordered to publish an apology in several Hawai'i newspapers.

Jerry Hasson of Huntington Beach, Calif., must also pay more than $13,000 and post the apology on an eBay bulletin board on archaeological memorabilia.

Hasson, 56, told U.S. District Judge A. Howard Matz that he tried to sell the skull because he had been diagnosed with cancer and needed money.

"I wasn't aware, I wasn't knowledgeable about how Hawaiians feel about native remains," Hasson said in court.

Hasson took the skull from an archaeological excavation near a Maui beach in 1969.

He had sneaked onto the beach with friends and found an entire skeleton — but only took the skull, Hasson wrote in his original posting on eBay.

A Native Hawaiian saw the offering and told Hasson to remove it. An undercover agent with the U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs later contacted Hasson. Hasson told him that although he had removed the ad from eBay, he was offering the skull directly to "a handful of bidders."

Hasson pleaded guilty in January to a federal charge of engaging in interstate commerce with illegally unearthed archaeological items.

The skull will be returned to Hawai'i.