ABSTRACT
Further Reading....................................................................................................................341
Marks left by footwear are routinely used in the investigation of crimes. In most but not all cases, footwear is personal only to one owner, but it is also an artifact easily subject to replacement or change. Therefore, there can be time considerations affecting the use of footwear mark evidence in most investigations. This, in turn, has implications for the way this evidence and intelligence is used and presented in court. The time element, as much as the fact that footwear has a peripheral association with an individual and is not a body part, is what separates footwear marks from finger and other frictionridge marks, forms of evidence considered to be the nearest evidential analog. These differences, as well as a number of less immediately obvious disparities, make footwear mark investigation a quite distinct discipline with a number of quite different, and in some cases, unique considerations.
