ABSTRACT
Fingers, guns, and tools leave pattern evidence; treaded items, such as tires and shoes, do the same. Tires and shoes are mass-produced items, so at first it might seem that the best forensic scientists could do with a tire or shoe impression is link it back to the type of tire or a brand of shoe. Patent shoeprints are those that are easily seen, such as bloody shoeprints on a light-colored surface. Locating most footwear impressions, however, requires additional effort. The forensic examination of footwear is like that of other types of pattern evidence that we have described previously, such as fingerprints and tool marks. Case samples are compared with impressions from potential sources and with elimination samples. As with other types of pattern evidence, it is usually easy to eliminate a shoe as a possible source of an impression but challenging to express the degree of similarity between a questioned impression and possible sources.
