I know next to nothing about internal corporate investigations or the like, so maybe this is common practice in that world. But I am bothered by one point that keeps getting brought up -- that "more probable than not" is not a troubling standard by which to judge guilt because that's essentially the same standard--preponderance of the evidence--that is followed in civil litigation.
That's true enough, but one of the reasons that standard is followed in the court system is because it's been arrived at through the adversary process. The evidence of the plaintiff has been tested through (hopefully) rigorous cross-examination by parties with a strong interest in testing it, experts presented by one side are frequently offset or challenged by competing experts, and then the factfinder evaluates everything they've just seen and heard -- only deciding at THAT point if there's 51 percent evidence that the plaintiff has proved its case.
This "process," such as it is, features none of that. No one from the Patriots has had any opportunity to challenge the expert conclusions, poke holes in witness testimony, or subject the evidence or conclusions drawn to any kind of pushback before the "verdict" was reached. As I said, maybe that's commonplace when dealing with corporate or internal investigations, but it has nothing to do with the standard of proof set out in litigation -- so it shouldn't be defended that way.
