The samples of soil you've collected from a suspect's shoes maybe the same type of soil within a shoe print ?

Question

discovered at the scene of a crime.When collecting standards from the crime scene, you should collect?

A-soil only from within the shoe print

B-soil only from within the shoe print,from about 3 ft around the shoe print,and from some distance even farther from the print

C-some soil no more than 2 ft away from the shoe print,but you shouldn't disturb the evidence by collecting soil from the print itself

D-no soil because soil standards can't be forensically compared

Answer 1

I would say B. Soil can definitely be forensically compared, so the question is, where should the samples be taken from.  I think the more samples you have (and from various distances around the print) the better.  This is for a couple of reasons, that all come back to the idea that the suspect had to walk through the soil to get to that point.  A person cannot step somewhere without having also stepped somewhere around that location.  

First, soil is slightly different in different areas of a plot, and it can be relatively similar between two different plots.  So, if you take a sample from only the print, you may only have a partial match or no match at all.  Also, a lawyer could say that the evidence is not valid if it was only taken from one spot on the scene if that soil can match soil in another area too.  

Next, soil can stick and become unstuck.  So as someone walks, they gather some soil, get rid of some, etc.  So, the final soil sample on the shoe will be a compilation of all of the soil that person walked in.  You could almost determine a path someone walked from the soil sample from their shoe.  

So basically, you need as many samples around the spot as you can get (but make sure that you label where you got the soil from) so you can cross-reference the soil on the shoe with the location as a whole.