On April 9, a Court of Inquiry was convened to inquire into the circumstances surrounding the marching of platoon 71 into Ribbon Creek. The proceedings began the next day. Staff Sergeant McKeon was initially represented by a Marine Corps attorney; on April 14, his brother-in-law Thomas P. Costello stepped in as his personal legal counsel. Costello was assisted by another New York lawyer, Jim McGarry, and by Lieutenant Jeremiah Collins, as Marine-Corps-designated defense counsel. There had been no specific prohibition against entering the creek, as Colonel McKean (who had ordered the drill instructors initial confinement) notes in his memoir, "Ribbon Creek". When asked by counsel for the defense whether there were any orders that prohibited using the marshes and swamp areas for training exercises, Colonel McKean answered: "...To the best of my knowledge the only order that relates to swamps has to do with marching down around the area of Elliot's Beach ..." During the proceedings, Costello established that night marches were common exercises. In his memoir, "Ribbon Creek", McKean writes that General "Burger's efforts to deny the practice of night marches into swamps becomes ludicrous when we analyze the argument of his ghost writer, Major Faw." McKean confirmed this practice by asking about eighteen Marines assisting in the search of Ribbon Creek that night if they had ever marched into the swamps at night; his answer had been that a "clear majority" of them had done so.