Michigan vs. Tyler, the Supreme Court decided that "fire fighters, and/or police and arson investigators, may seize arson evidence at a fire without warrant or consent, on the basis of exigent circumstances and/or plain view"

This may only occur during the extinguishing operations or immediately after, otherwise a warrant or the owner's consent is necessary. This came as a response to an accusation of "conspiracy to burn real property," where the prosecutors had collected and used evidence of numerous days after the firefighting operations. The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the defendant, as evidence was collected without warrant in the subsequent days.

I think the process used by a gas chromatograph (heating, etc.) is not appropriate for separating sand granules and the gas chromatograph cannot identify sand grains as a substance. In my opinion, something like filtration should have been used to separate sand from the rest of the...
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