Emails:
Yesterday, the forensic investigator from GE said emails are purged from the system and not recoverable after 30 days IF they have been deleted from the users' inbox. If they are still in the inbox, they remain. I found this insane for such a large company. I would assume they would have some system to go back into their process to recover them. So even though LE has many of the emails, it's likely the ones with any evidence pointing towards an affair would have been deleted (no way I'd keep them in my inbox if I was having an affair!).
Regarding the issue of the witness not bringing her notes/records, I would have thought the attorneys would have had them! I felt like she was going to say that, but stopped. They're the ones calling her in - don't they have to review documents with her before she gets on the stand?
I did find some of the questions odd which were posed to her about travel policies, per diem limits, etc. She's an IT person - even if she "knew" the answer, she is not the person who sets the policy or enforces it. Not an expert in that area at all.
I wholeheartedly agree with you. But even if e-mails are deleted and not retained in a company system, LE forensics can retrieve any and all communications off of hard drives. It's almost impossible to get rid of them entirely. There are whole units of LE whose only job is to do this. That made me wonder what was the purpose of that line of questioning when of course prosecutors and LE knows this.
What's puzzling is G.E. seemed to have an overabundance of security EXCEPT in this area. It makes me wonder......and yes the questions posed to the IT expert about travel seemed strange, even stranger is that she seemed to recollect by memory each and every trip and expense they incurred while allegedly forgetting similar specific information about e-mails and failing to bring along hard copy that would refresh her memory. Yes, you're right....why didn't prosecutors (or DT) have the hard copies, too? They had those of everything else. It makes it seem very odd, even deliberate, IMO.
I still sense that G.E. may be covering their own backs. If you consider how many people KNEW this affair was going on and nobody did anything, told anyone, reported it to anyone - it seems in a company that large that doesn't make sense.
Hypothetical: I am a member of RS' family and I decide to sue G.E. My grounds are that they had a strict policy against affairs between co-workers. There must be somebody in the organization that enforces this and all employee policies. Usually employees are given at least verbal and/or written warnings which are retained in their files. So there would be a paper trail.
Assuming people knew but did not tell, I'd target those individuals up to and including HN's supervisor and other corporate personnel for failure to implement their policies, resulting in several months of this affair and the eventual fallout, which was RS' death. Yes, I would call them to account.
So I wonder if some deal was not made behind the scenes to limit the questioning in this sphere as pertained to the G.E. employees, his and her co-workers. I did not hear ONE specific question of one witness whether he or she ever suspected or knew of their affair. I do recall testimony that HN himself revealed it to one or more people but I can't recall what, if anything they did about it and I would ask WHY DIDN'T YOU REPORT IT?
