The Case
United States v. McDermott, 64 F.3d 1448 (10th Cir. 1995), is a real, published decision of the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. It arose in the context of the federal Continuing Criminal Enterprise (CCE) statute, 21 U.S.C. § 848 — among the most powerful weapons Congress enacted against organized criminal enterprises.
What makes it extraordinary is not only the doctrine but the posture: the defendant litigated pro se — without a lawyer — through conviction and into the appellate court, and secured a published opinion. In an arena where represented defendants routinely lose, a self‑represented litigant moving a federal appeals court to act is exceedingly rare.
The holdings, verified from the published opinion: the Tenth Circuit held the evidence sufficient to sustain the CCE conviction and found no double‑jeopardy violation — but held that McDermott's Sixth Amendment right to self‑representation had been violated, and on that ground reversed and remanded for a new trial. Read the full opinion at Justia or CourtListener.
Sit with the irony: a man exercising his right to defend himself won reversal because the courts had interfered with that very right — and the decision now stands as citable authority on self‑representation, carried for three decades in the Georgetown Law Journal's Annual Review of Criminal Procedure.