Step 3 · The eight markers
Eight tells. Four pages. One signed order.
Each marker below is presented with the exact text from the order, the
page or paragraph it appears in, and what it indicates. The markers are
ordered by diagnostic strength — the earliest are the hardest to explain
under any human-only authorship hypothesis.
01
Smoking gun · Verbatim duplication
Two quoted passages from Dr. Cranbrook appear word-for-word in two different sections of the order.
A trained legal drafter writing a structured judicial order does not
repeat verbatim quotes across the Background and the
Findings of Fact. Those sections do different jobs. The
Background recites procedural history. The Findings of Fact state what
the court has determined to be true. A human drafter who needed
Cranbrook's conclusion in both places would either state it once and
cross-reference, or paraphrase it differently in each section.
Here, the same two quoted strings appear in both — not paraphrased,
not summarized, but byte-for-byte identical. Only the verb of
attribution differs:
"In her December 20, 2024, Report, Dr. Cranbrook
opined Mr. Guertin
'declined to participate in [the] evaluation due to ongoing
symptoms of mental illness' and
'defendant's prognosis for attaining the capacity for
competent participation in the legal process appears poor.'"
Findings of Fact ¶ 2
Page 2
"Dr. Cranbrook ultimately opined
Mr. Guertin
'declined to participate in [the] evaluation due to ongoing
symptoms of mental illness' and
'defendant's prognosis for attaining the capacity for
competent participation in the legal process appears poor.'"
This is the signature of a model that was given Cranbrook's report as
input and instructed to draft each section as a separate task. Each
section's generation pass independently re-incorporates the same source
quotes, because the model has no recollection of having already used
them. The added word "ultimately" in the second instance is a
characteristic hedge — the model trying to make a duplicate feel like
a synthesis.
02
Structural · Numbering integrity
The Conclusions of Law are numbered 2, 3, then jump to 6 — then immediately give the next paragraph the number 6 again.
The Findings of Fact run cleanly: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Then the order moves
to its Conclusions of Law section. That section is numbered like this:
1
2
3
4
5
6
6
No paragraph numbered 1. No paragraph numbered 4. No paragraph
numbered 5. Two consecutive paragraphs both numbered 6. A human
attorney does not draft an order with two paragraphs both labeled "6"
in succession. A judge does not sign one. This is the kind of
structural artifact that surfaces when a model's internal counter
loses track during a long generation, or when sections were
regenerated and stitched together without the running numbering
being repaired.
03
Smoking gun · Verbatim self-duplication
The same 28-word legal-conclusion phrase appears word-for-word in Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law.
Independent of the Cranbrook duplications, the order's own
conclusion sentence is reused identically in two structurally
different sections. The sentence is not a fragment of recited testimony
— it is the order's own analytical statement of why Guertin meets the
legal standard for competence:
"Mr. Guertin has demonstrated an understanding of Court
processes and the charges he is facing, as well as the ability to
consult with his counsel about his defense."
Appears verbatim at: Findings of Fact ¶ 5 · Conclusions of Law ¶ 6 (the second one)
Findings of Fact and Conclusions of Law are deliberately distinct
sections under Rule 52 — facts are what happened; conclusions are
what the law makes of them. A human drafter does not paste the same
sentence into both. A model generating each section as a separate
prompt does this routinely, particularly when the same source
material is in context for both passes.
04
Structural · Internal contradiction
The order endorses Cranbrook's mental-illness diagnosis as "credible" and then finds Guertin competent to proceed.
Cranbrook's December 20, 2024 report concluded that Guertin had
psychosis, persistent delusional thinking, and "a poor prognosis for
attaining the capacity for competent participation in the legal process."
That is the entire foundation of an incompetency finding under
Rule 20.01. Yet the order does this in successive paragraphs:
"Based on the record before the Court, the Court ultimately
finds Dr. Cranbrook's conclusion that Mr. Guertin is suffering from
a mental illness credible."
Conclusions of Law (the second paragraph numbered 6)
"Matthew Guertin is COMPETENT to proceed to trial."
Order section, page 4
Under Dusky v. United States, the controlling federal standard,
a defendant is competent if he has rational understanding of the
proceedings and can rationally consult with counsel. If the defendant
is suffering from a credible mental illness that compromises rational
engagement — exactly what Cranbrook concluded and what this order
affirms — the legal conclusion does not coexist with a competency
finding. They cannot both be true. A human drafter who recognized the
contradiction would have to soften one finding or the other. A model
generating boilerplate for each section independently produces both at
full strength and lets the contradiction stand.
05
Linguistic · Coherence break
"Recently demonstrated symptoms of psychosis during previous competence evaluations." Recent or previous — pick one.
"Dr. Cranbrook reported Mr. Guertin has recently demonstrated
symptoms of psychosis during previous competence evaluations
which 'has persisted in his recent communications and allegations.'"
Findings of Fact ¶ 2
The previous competency evaluations referenced were conducted in
July 2023 and January 2024 — they are not "recent." The temporal
modifiers fight each other in a single sentence: recently
demonstrated, during previous evaluations,
has persisted in his recent communications. Three different
time-frames describing the same alleged behavior. A model patching
together excerpts from a source report doesn't catch the chronology
clash because it has no model of when things happened — only of which
words tend to appear together.
06
Linguistic · Grammar collapse
"Symptoms of psychosis... which has persisted." Plural subject. Singular verb. Inside a quoted passage.
"Dr. Cranbrook reported Mr. Guertin has recently demonstrated
symptoms of psychosis during previous competence
evaluations which 'has persisted in his recent
communications and allegations.'"
Findings of Fact ¶ 2 — quoting Cranbrook's report
"Symptoms" is plural; the verb should be "have." The sentence
attributes the broken grammar to a quote from Cranbrook's report —
but the same paragraph quotes Cranbrook a second time using the
plural correctly ("these symptoms have been noted to
compromise..."). One paragraph cannot have Cranbrook saying both
"symptoms has" and "symptoms have." Either the report itself was
rewritten when transcribed into the order, or — far more likely —
the model collapsed the antecedent of the relative pronoun
which from the plural ("symptoms") to a singular concept
("psychosis") halfway through the sentence. Subject-verb agreement
breaks inside long noun-phrase structures are documented behavior of
early-era LLMs.
07
Linguistic · Anaphoric repetition
Six identical sentence-stems in close succession: "He understands… He understands… He understands…"
"He understands the nature of the charges against him.
He understands the roles of the many parties.
He understands the severity of the allegations against him.
He understands the benefits of having counsel.
He understands the nature of a trial, and the plea bargain process."
Findings of Fact ¶ 4
Locking onto a sentence stem and repeating it five or six times in a
row is a known pattern of the GPT-3 / early-2023 generation of models.
The technical reason: when the model generates one sentence with a
certain shape, the probability of the next sentence taking the same
shape rises sharply — it falls into a syntactic groove and cannot
easily climb out. Human legal writers do produce competency-checklists,
but they tend to vary the verbs (recognizes, understands, can
explain, identifies, demonstrates awareness of) precisely because
the unbroken repetition reads mechanically. This passage does not vary.
08
Linguistic · Antecedent failure
"The Court finds Dr. Cranbrook's report to be generally reliable based upon his presentation, or lack thereof."
"The Court finds Dr. Cranbrook's report to be generally
reliable based upon his presentation, or lack thereof."
Findings of Fact ¶ 2
Dr. Cranbrook is referred to as her consistently throughout
the rest of the order. So the pronoun "his" here cannot
refer to her. The most charitable reading is that "his" refers to
Guertin — but Guertin did testify at length at the March 5
hearing, so the modifier "or lack thereof" doesn't fit him
either. The sentence reads as if the model fused two different
clauses without keeping track of who the antecedent was. The
"or lack thereof" tail is the kind of catch-all hedge a
model adds when it has lost the thread but still has to finish the
sentence.
What the record establishes
The text under Judge William H. Koch's signature on April 3, 2025 was
not drafted in the way judicial orders are supposed to be drafted. The
order contains two pairs of verbatim duplications, a
numbering sequence that contains no paragraph 1, no paragraph 4,
no paragraph 5, and two consecutive paragraphs both numbered 6,
a logical contradiction between its own findings about
Cranbrook's diagnosis and its own legal conclusion, a
temporal sentence that cannot resolve to a coherent timeline,
a grammatical break inside a quoted passage, an
anaphoric stack of six identically-shaped sentences,
and a pronoun with no consistent antecedent. Eight
independent surface anomalies in a four-page document.
Each of these markers, taken alone, could be brushed off as sloppy
typing or rushed drafting. The combination is something else. The
density and the specific kind of error are the signature of
sectioned LLM generation reviewed by a human who didn't read carefully
enough to catch any of them.
What survived that review became the legal instrument that determined
whether Matthew Guertin was competent to defend himself in his own
criminal case. Twenty-six days later, that competency finding was
effectively overridden when Judge Hudleston ordered a fourth Rule 20.01
evaluation — relying on the same mental-illness language the algorithm
had baked into the "competent" order. The trapdoor closed on schedule,
using load-bearing language that no human carefully wrote.
The PDF is at the top of this page. Every quote here is in it. Open it.
Read it. The findings reproduce themselves.
MNCOURTFRAUD.COM · State of Minnesota v. Guertin · 27-CR-23-1886 · Document 127 of the criminal docket