DATE: Friday, September 26, 1997            TAG: 9709260790

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NEWPORT NEWS                      LENGTH:   77 lines

3 MEN PLEAD GUILTY, FINED FOR DIGGING UP CIVIL WAR ITEMS BUT JUDGE REDUCES OUTRAGEOUS RESTITUTION

When Wallace ``Skip'' Mayorga went hunting last year at Yorktown Naval Weapons Station, he had no idea he was committing a federal crime.

His prey was not deer, only Civil War artifacts.

The first surprise came when Navy police arrested him and two friends - all Virginia Beach residents - and threatened to charge them with felonies for digging up 26 Civil War bullets and buttons from the Yorktown woods. The artifacts are worth about $53 total, the government says.

The second surprise came Thursday in a Newport News federal court, where a judge accepted a guilty plea by the men, then slammed the government's proposed sentence for the crime as ``outrageous.''

On Thursday, Mayorga and his friends - Robert D. York and Daniel R. Bell - pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor: excavating objects of antiquity from government property without permission.

In return, the three men agreed to one year's probation and $3,000 restitution each to help the Navy clean up the mess they left behind. Privately, the men considered the $9,000 total ridiculous, but agreed to it to end the case.

When a prosecutor presented the deal in court Thursday, Magistrate Judge Robert E. Bradberry blew up. He declared the restitution way out of proportion to the damage done.

The Civil War buffs had spent 8 1/2 hours hunting artifacts at the Yorktown base and dug about 100 little holes. ``I have no intention of imposing $9,000 restitution. Ain't no way, folks!'' Bradberry declared. ``Nine thousand dollars is absolutely, positively outrageous!''

Later, the judge agreed to $6,000 restitution, divided among the three men.

Even that left Mayorga with a sour taste in his mouth. ``I've been doing this for 21 years,'' Mayorga said, ``and this is the first time I've gotten into trouble. We didn't know it (was illegal) at the time. We parked right out in the open. They didn't stop us or say a thing.''

The incident happened in a wooded area off Halstead Road at the Yorktown base on Oct. 20, 1996. Mayorga, a Civil War buff, believed Confederate troops had camped nearby. His friend, York, who is active-duty Navy, got the men onto the base.

Armed with metal detectors, the three began their hunt at 9:30 a.m. By 6 p.m., when they were stopped, they had pulled 26 items from the ground, mostly bullets. The most expensive items were a buckle and a cuff link, both worth about $5.

``We knew ARPA (the federal Archaeological Resources Protection Act) applied to national parks,'' Mayorga said after Thursday's court hearing. ``But I never had any idea it applied to military bases.''

At first, Mayorga said, prosecutors threatened to charge the men with four felonies each: theft of government property, destruction of government property, conspiracy and removal of artifacts. They also faced up to $16,000 in restitution.

In response to the crime, the Navy hired a Maryland consulting firm to conduct an archaeological survey and repair the damage. The Navy paid $9,314 for the report and the repairs, so prosecutors wanted the men to pay that in restitution.

``This is what the government paid, whether you think it's right or fair or not,'' prosecutor Harvey Bryant told the judge.

Bradberry was aghast. He compared the $9,000 report to the government's infamous $500 toilet seat.

He said he had no sympathy for the artifact hunters - ``If you guys are real history buffs, you knew when you went in there with metal detectors you were wrong,'' he said - but balked at the restitution figure.

``The charge is outrageous for what we're talking about. It's absolutely outrageous,'' Bradberry said. ``It's instances like this when the government has serious credibility problems. . . . I don't think your archaeologists can prove $9,300 worth of costs to do what they did.''

In the end, the defendants agreed to stay off government property for one year, except for work, to pay $2,000 restitution each and to stay on federal probation for one year. ILLUSTRATION: Color photo

RICHARD L. DUNSTON/The Virginian-Pilot

Skip Mayorga of Virginia Beach holds artifacts similar to the ones

that got him into trouble.

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