Table Of ContentForensic Gait Analysis
Forensic Gait Analysis
Haydn D. Kelly
First edition published 2020
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CONTENTS
Foreword by Peter James vii
Foreword by Dr William A. Wood ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgements xv
Author xvii
Contributors xix
1 Gait Analysis: A Historical Overview 1
2 Observational Gait Analysis – Progression and Application 37
3 Neurological Disorders Affecting Gait 63
4 Emotions and Gait 87
5 Video Image Analysis 105
6 Gait Analysis in Identifcation 139
7 Height Estimation Using the Foot or Lower Limb as a Dimension 211
8 Photogrammetry 231
9 Interpreting and Communicating Forensic Statistics 251
v
ConTenTs
10 Reports and Report Writing 267
11 Expert Evidence in Court 287
12 The Expert in Court – The Expert’s Perspective 315
Index 329
vi
FOREWORD BY PETER JAMES
It is a truism that we owe so much of our modern technology and medi-
cine to warfare, where rapid advances take place out of necessity. The fght
against crime, too, results in constantly advancing law enforcement tech-
nology, in particular, in the forensic sciences, and these have been comple-
mented by advances in other felds which I try hard to keep abreast of,
and which will undoubtedly continue to expand in the age of a digital
revolution and beyond.
For the past twenty-fve years, in the course of research for my crime
thrillers, I’ve spent a great deal of time with both investigators and, some-
times, villains too. Two of the most signifcant things I have observed are
that, frstly the criminal status quo is constantly changing, and secondly,
there is a constant game of catch-up going on between law enforcement
and felons, which creates a real dynamic, in trying to keep us safe.
I was attending a 0900 hours daily briefng meeting in Brighton
Police Station, one Monday morning, around ffteen years ago, when the
Divisional Commander turned to me and said, ‘Peter you’ve come on a
historic day. This is the frst time since records began that there has not
been an overnight domestic burglary in the city.’
‘Congratulations!’ I replied. ‘So you’ve won the war on crime!’
He laughed, and said that the old school style of creeper burglar – the
kind who shins up your drainpipe in the middle of the night and steals
your silverware and jewellery – was becoming a dinosaur. He could make
much more money out of drug dealing, or the very latest area of crime,
internet fraud, and with a less severe sentence if caught.
It wasn’t so long ago that some police offcers’ kit comprised a whistle
and a truncheon, together with special police phone booths, just like Dr
Who’s tardis, that they could run too in order to make an emergency call
or to report their whereabouts. Now GPS trackers tells the Control Room
exactly where every offcer is; and he or she has Captor spray and many
carry a taser and other modern equipment. In some areas they patrol on a
Segway. And the high-tech and cybercrime units are the fastest growing
areas in many police departments but that’s not all that is evolving!
Technology has always interested me and having co-founded an
internet service provider in the early 1990s I realised right back then that
alongside its potential to become the Information Superhighway, the
vii
ForeworD by PeTer James
internet was also likely to open up a whole new area of violations needing
to be countered.
In 1994 in addition to the usual print formats, Penguin published my
science thriller, Host, on two foppy discs, billing it as the world’s frst
electronic novel – and I’m very proud there is a copy of it in the Science
Museum, London.
The creation of new things and the development of science never
cease to amaze me and I feel it is vital always to be on the cutting edge for
my books to feel current – and that means being abreast of the advances
in law enforcement.
Occasionally in the course of my research I strike gold, and I consider
the day I met Haydn Kelly to be just that. We were introduced at a din-
ner by a mutual friend in the security business, and from the moment I
discovered that Haydn was a pioneering specialist in Forensic Podiatry –
something I had not heard about – I pestered him with questions for the
rest of the evening around the remarkable area of forensics he had created
and which was frst introduced as admissible evidence in criminal law
in 2000, at the Old Bailey Central Criminal Court in London – Forensic
Gait Analysis. To introduce a new form of identifcation to the forensic
toolbox, and for that to be utilised in legal systems around the world, is
a considerable undertaking and a rare achievement. I found it not only
fascinating, but saw an opportunity to write about an area of expertise
in the battle against crime that no author had yet used. Haydn has subse-
quently appeared in nine of my most recent Detective Superintendent Roy
Grace novels as himself (right down to the details of the clothes he wears!)
and forensic podiatry has become a major weapon in Grace’s armoury for
solving homicide cases.
I’ve had comments from many police offcers around the world, who
had not previously heard of this developing feld, so quite apart from now
being a good friendship, it is a great symbiotic relationship that Haydn
and I have – he’s brought me the ability to write innovative aspects that
are deployed in homicide investigations, that have never before appeared
in fction, and I hope through my novels and works to have brought this
invaluable new tool in the fght against crime – of all kinds – to a wider
law enforcement audience.
Peter James
www.peterjames.com
viii
FOREWORD BY
DR WILLIAM A. WOOD
The involvement of healthcare professionals in forensic sciences has
expanded the tools available in the examination of crime scene evidence.
Podiatrists bring to the table a bedrock understanding of human biome-
chanics and ambulation. Which not only has an essential role in the clini-
cal diagnosis and treatment of many conditions, but also qualifying and
quantifying individual human gait patterns observed at crime scenes and
related environments.
Traditionally, forensic evidence in connection with the foot has
involved aspects such as the evaluation of static fndings and physical
evidence associated with a crime scene. Generally, these have included
footprints and footwear impressions with various techniques for captur-
ing imprints, which also reveal elements such as foot angulation, step and
stride lengths. Numerous methods have evolved to categorise incriminat-
ing or exclusionary evidence to a class level of fndings, or ideally, to a spe-
cifc individual’s characteristics and probabilistic evidential value. Review
of medical records are also useful when considering the presence of any
underlying pathology, injury or surgery that can affect an individual’s
style or manner of walking or running gait – that is, movement of the
whole body from the head to feet; where permutations of variability can
have effects at micro and macro levels.
Forensic gait analysis engages a person’s gait or features of their
gait as physical evidence in the form of CCTV material and other video
footage associated with a crime scene. The widening prevalence of
CCTV and other video footage is indispensable in assisting the identi-
fication of an individual, including where disguises occur. Evaluation
of the gait displayed on CCTV footage of an unknown individual
and comparison to those of a suspect/s is the essence of forensic gait
analysis.
With increased processing power and storage capacity of computers,
and the incorporation of sophisticated software technology, it would not
be unexpected to realise the facility to identify an individual by their gait
remotely.
ix
