Vance Rider was a 41-year-old man with a long criminal record and a low IQ when he left Oakland in late 1999 and bedded down at a homeless shelter in San Mateo. Police found him there in March 2000 and discovered he had failed to reregister as a sex offender as required by law — once a year, within five days of his birthday, and within five days of a change of address.
After a San Mateo County judge barred a psychologist from testifying about Rider’s low mental capacity, a jury convicted him of violating the registration law. With multiple felony convictions on his record — three robberies in 1978, and forcible oral copulation of a minor and attempted manslaughter in 1983 –he was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison under California’s three-strikes law.
Rider has remained in prison during lengthy and unsuccessful appeals in the state courts, and on Wednesday he lost again, this time in the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
One defense argument was that the trial judge should have allowed the jury to hear a psychologist who said Rider had an IQ of 69 and that such people have difficulty with their memory and ability to make plans. The judge said the defense could offer evidence that Rider was unaware of his duty to register, or lacked the ability to comply, but that state law barred testimony that he suffered from a mental defect that affected his capacity to follow the law.
