I’m not a lawyer, but the judicial system could benefit from my skill set. I am a professional surveyor having designed many survey instruments over the years and having taught my Survey Workshops for three decades now. (Yikes! I must be old.) As a survey questionnaire designer, I am therefore a form designer, and the court system could use someone with basic knowledge of form design.
Forms — in the sense of the word I’m using here — is a device for soliciting input from someone. A survey questionnaire, which is my area of expertise, is a form that solicits input from another. A good questionnaire captures the respondent’s true feelings with minimal effort. Ditto for forms.
All of us have encountered forms that make us shake our heads in disgust, probably upon arrival in some doctor’s office. The form may have asked for information we can’t remember, been unclear in what it was asking, unclear in how to provide your information, or have bizarre instructions. We’ve all been there — multiple times.
Sometimes we ask for the person behind the desk to explain the instructions. Typical response: “Nobody looks at it. We just have to check a box that you’re completed the form.”
Now imagine if your life depended upon filling out a form properly. Karen Read’s future life does. Literally.
If you live in the U.S., you have probably heard about the Karen Read murder trial. Since I live in Greater Boston, I hear about it daily. Ms. Read is on trial as I write this in June 2025 for the alleged murder of her boyfriend, Boston policeman John O’Keefe, in winter 2022 in Canton, Mass. The case is noteworthy for the incredibly unprofessional, if not incompetent, actions of the state investigators. (I chose not to quote the text messages by the lead investigator, who was fired for his conduct.)
As I write this, she’s on trial for the alleged crime for a second time, having been tried on the same charges in 2024, but the trial ended in a mistrial. Why? In part because of a horribly designed form. Yup, a form.
The jury deliberated in 2024, but said they couldn’t reach a consensus. So Judge Beverly Cannone declared a mistrial. However, after the fact, several jurors went public stating that the jury DID reach unanimity on the most serious two of the three counts for which Read was charged:
1) Manslaughter while operating a Motor Vehicle while under the Influence,
2) Involuntary Manslaughter.
But they deadlocked, supposedly 9-3 for guilty, of the “lesser included charges”. (Note: no jurors have come forward to contest the statement of their peers that the jury had reached these unanimous decisions.)
So, they apparently did reach unanimity on some but not all charges, but they didn’t tell the court this. Why not?
Because they didn’t know how to make that point in the Verdict Form. Egads !!
Why didn’t they know how to make their true decision known? Well, look at the nearby form the jury had to use. (It might be best to download it for easier viewing.)
Read it carefully. Could you figure out how to make a mixed jury decision known? As the jury Foreperson, how would you fill out the form to indicate “Not Guilty” on some of the counts but undecided on others? Examine the form again and try to find that option. Good luck!!
The heart of the design problem is this:
There’s only one Not Guilty entry spot.
So… how does the jury indicate Not Guilty on some charges but Guilty on others? Or in this case, Not Guilty on some and deadlocked on others?
This form has the “look” of a “check all that apply” questionnaire, but it’s not. Some pairs are mutually exclusive options. That is, check A or B. Look at charge #2. If you decided guilty, which box(es) do you check? Confusing for sure.
But what’s really wrong about the structure is that a jury could check Not Guilty AND check Guilty for one or more of the charges. How does that make sense?
The way a jury announces its verdict is an indicator of proper form design. (Really. The proper form design is right in front of the court’s noses.) Each charge is read by a court officer and who then asks the foreperson “Guilty or not guilty?” Then onto the next charge. The verdict form should have used parallel logic.
A cardinal requirement of a good survey questionnaire form is that a respondent’s every option can be captured. (Sometimes that means using “Other: Please specify”.) This Verdict Form badly fails that test.
In the absence of a form design that clearly guided the reader — in this case jurors — on how to complete the form, clear instructions are needed. The Verdict Form contains no instructions. The jury included no lawyers who might have helped his or her peers in completing the form to reflect their decisions in full.
In the doctor’s office, you might turn to the person behind the desk for help. The equivalent didn’t happen here. and in my mind the presiding judge bears responsibility. Lacking proper instructions on the form, the judge should have augmented the (absent) written instructions for the jury. But the judge did not help them understand how to record their verdicts — or lack thereof.
True, the jurors could have — should have — asked, but Judge Cannone bears the responsibility for guiding the jury.
When the jury foreperson said they were deadlocked, the judge should have asked, “Did you reach a unanimous verdict on any of the counts?”
It is inconceivable to me that the judge did not ask that question. In my mind, it was a professional failure.
That failure led to the second trial on all the charges, including the most serious ones. The retrial has cost my state and the defendant a lot of money for, not to mention the stress of, a second trial.
By declaring a mistrial Judge Cannone allowed the state to retry Read on all the charges. The matter went before the state Supreme Court, which decided that Read could be retried on all the charges; that is, the retrial was not double jeopardy. Really.
Personally I was stunned by this in part because of the perverse incentive this creates for prosecutors:
Voila !! The prosecutors can get a do-over.
My state has never seen fit to hire me for any survey work. But as a civic minded taxpayer, I’ve redesigned the Verdict Form for the Commonwealth. Notice that for each charge there’s a box for Guilty and Not Guilty. This revision took me about half an hour. And think of how much money, grief, and hassle would have been saved…
Boy that was complicated !!
If I had designed a survey questionnaire form for a client as horrible as the one the court uses to determine a defendant’s fate, I could — or should — be sued for professional malpractice.
A familiar legal phrase says that a lawyer who represents himself has a fool for a client. Similarly, a client who has a form designer as his lawyer is a fool. But, a court that has a clerk as a form designer shows fools are in charge.
Lawyers know law. They don’t know form design.
Arrogance in Action.
The jury posed 3 questions for the judge. The third question is most pertinent for the Verdict Form
Jurors wanted to know if they found Read Not Guilty on 2 charges, but were deadlocked on a 3rd charge if they’d be a hung jury. Judge Cannone replied that this was a “theoretical” question that she could not answer.
How is that theoretical? That’s what happened a year ago. Again, this demonstrates the problems with the Verdict Form and the jury instructions.