Footwear Comparison

A crime scene may often contain impressions from shoes or other footwear. Forensic footwear examiners attempt to identify the type of footwear that left the impressions and then compare those impressions to footwear associated with a suspect. Like fingerprints, footwear impressions may be patent and visible to the naked eye or latent, requiring some device or material to make them visible. Whether patent or latent, the impression must be preserved, either physically or photographically, for comparison by the examiner. The extremely large quantity and quality of available footwear make manual identification difficult, and software and computerized databases are being developed to assist in the process. Like other forms of pattern evidence, the opinions of forensic footwear examiners are subjective and can raise admissibility issues.