Yeah Dart, the follow up was geared more towards clearing up speculation over the who the pilot was. It was initially postulated that it was the Air Wing Commander, but it came out that a Deputy was the mishap pilot. The other bit of kerfuffle as you stated regards the FNAEB(Flying Naval Air Evaluation Board) was that they did say it was his error in “reading” the situation that lead to the aircraft loss. He never ducked accepting responsibility, and while permanently grounded he was cleared to resume operational duties, and was as you report assigned command of the Marine Operational Test and Evaluation Squadron(VMX-1). Yet it took 9 months after the incident and 6 months after his return to duty and a new assignment for the Commandant of the Corps to override the Board and remove him from command.
As to the location of the Standby instrument, I place that as more of an issue with lack of experience (read TT) with aircraft as well as lack of currency. Other MIL high speed types have similar panel layouts in terms of locating emergency or standby instrumentation, F-16 comes to mind. Plus as a CFII, one of the things you need to learn is flying the plane from the right side while looking at the flight instruments on the left side of the panel. And in commercial service, we always cross check the standby display(usually mounted in the panel center) as well as the other pilot’s side displays to verify instrument integrity.