Footwear Marks

Footwear marks (or impressions) have the potential to provide a conclusive association between a particular shoe and a suspected footwear mark recovered from a crime scene, for example.

Examples of crime scenes where footwear mark evidence might be obtained include burglary, robbery, criminal damage, and murder / assault cases.

In such cases, the crime scene footwear mark might be on a surface such as a window sill, tiled or wooden floor, kitchen worktop, and doors to premises. These marks can be enhanced at the scene, photographed to scale and possibly “lifted” from the scene using gel lifts when the scene is being examined by the Police.

If the mark is on a readily moveable item such as a piece of paper, the item itself might be removed from the scene.

In addition, footwear marks might be on the clothing / body of an individual who has been the victim of a repeated kicking / stamping assault, in which case the marks, which could be in the form of bruising, might be photographed using lighting techniques to enhance its quality.

When a comparison is made between a suspect’s shoe and a crime scene mark, features of the undersole such as pattern, pattern configuration, size, degree of wear and damage features are all assessed. In addition, the crime scene mark might show evidence of slight movement / slippage when the mark was made, or it might have been made when the undersole was wet, both of which can impose limits on the extent of the comparison.

There are literally thousands of different footwear undersole patterns, although some patterns can be very common, and in addition, some footwear sizes are very common, for example shoe sizes 8, 8½ and 9 together account for over 40% of men’s shoe sizes in the UK.

These factors generally mean that in the absence of damage or meaningful wear features to the undersole the strength of evidence to associate a particular shoe with a crime scene could potentially be somewhat limited.

However, small damage features on an undersole which are randomly created by the act of walking about in the footwear, if manifested in the crime scene mark, could potentially provide conclusive evidence of association simply because such features are random in their creation, size, and position on the undersole

In summary therefore, many factors have to be taken into account when assessing the strength of footwear evidence and in our experience it is vital that such evidence is independently assessed and evaluated. Indeed, in the past year or so we have been involved in several cases where we have successfully demonstrated to the jury that the strength of footwear evidence was in our opinion overstated in cases which relied heavily on that evidence, and not guilty verdicts were returned.