Oldest Living Marquette Law School Graduate Passes Away, Excelled in Law and Sports

Frank Zummach, thought to be the oldest living graduate of the Marquette Law School, passed away on April 30, in his hometown of Sheboygan at age 101.

In addition to a long career as a member of the Wisconsin bar, Zummach also played and coached basketball at Marquette, and from 1939-1942, he served as head coach of the Sheboygan Redskins of the National Basketball League, a forerunner of the NBA.

Zummach, a Milwaukee native, attended Marquette High School, and enrolled as a college student at Marquette in 1929. He began playing basketball for Marquette in 1930, and he entered the law school in 1932, with one year of varsity eligibility remaining.

Zummach continued to play on the Hilltopper varsity team as a first year law student and then switched to the role of assistant coach once his eligibility as a player expired. When he received his law degree in 1935, Frank was a member of the second class of Marquette Law students to be admitted to the bar under the diploma privilege. Because of the quality of his work in law school, he received the J.D. degree, rather than the then more common, L.L.B.

Frank gave up coaching in the fall of 1942 and for the next six decades, he practiced law in Sheboygan. In the late 1990’s, he was “rediscovered” by basketball historians and was a frequently lauded figure in basketball circles during the final fifteen years of his life.

For more on Frank’s career, see my post “The Marquette Law School Graduate Who Coached in the NBA Finals.” An extended obituary from the Sheboygan Press can be found at here.

 

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Seventh Circuit Affirms Money-Laundering, Conspiracy Convictions of Car Dealers for Cash Sales to Drug Traffickers

Amir Hosseini and Hossein Obaei, who operated three Chicago-area automobile dealerships, sold many luxury cars to drug dealers over a ten-year period. Hosseini and Obaei were apparently popular with this market segment because of their willingness to take large cash payments in small bills. Eventually, federal prosecutors caught up with them, and, following a five-week trial, they were convicted by a jury on 97 counts of conspiracy, money laundering, mail fraud, illegal transaction structuring, bank fraud, and aiding and abetting a drug conspiracy. The Seventh Circuit has now affirmed these convictions and the 15- and 20-year sentences that went along with them.

Had it been properly preserved, the most substantial legal issue on appeal would have been the question left open by United States v. Santos, 553 U.S. 507 (2008): whether, in a traditional money-laundering prosecution, the government must prove that the allegedly laundered proceeds are net profits, as opposed to gross receipts, of the underlying crime. (See my blog post about Santos here). However, since the Santos issue was raised for the first time on appeal, the court used plain-error review and found that the defendants could not satisfy the standard given the “unsettled state of the law.” (2)

Hosseini and Obaei also raised an interesting voir dire issue.

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Setser v. United States: Bureaucratic Sentencing on Trial in the Supreme Court, Again

While he was already on probation for another offense, Monroe Setser was arrested for trafficking in meth.  The arrest led to three separate criminal proceedings: a revocation of Setser’s probation in state court and fresh prosecutions in both state and federal court.  (One wonders why our law-enforcement authorities have nothing better to do with their time than pile on the charges in these sorts of redundant prosecutions.  Oh, to overturn the Supreme Court’s regrettable decision in Bartkus v. Illinois!)  The federal prosecution reached the sentencing stage first, and the district court decided that it should rule on whether the 151-month federal sentence should be served consecutively to or concurrently with the anticipated state sentences.  The court split the difference, determining that the federal sentence would be consecutive to the sentence for the probation violation, but concurrent with the sentence for the fresh state charge.  Then — wouldn’t you know it! — the state court made the federal sentence a logical impossibility by ordering the two state sentences to run concurrently with one another.

On appeal, Setser argued unsuccessfully that the district court lacked authority to make a concurrent/consecutive decision relative to a state sentence that had not yet been imposed.  In Setser’s view, it was up to the Bureau of Prisons to make the call, based on its authority under 18 U.S.C. § 3621(b) to decide whether federal sentences are to be served in a state or federal facility.  The Fifth Circuit rejected this view, and the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed in a 6-3 decision earlier this spring.

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