Xavier Becerra, the leading Democratic candidate for California governor, pushed state lawyers to inflate an inmate's IQ scores to enable his execution while serving as state attorney general, according to court records detailed in The Intercept investigation.
Becerra's office argued that a Black death row inmate's cognitive abilities exceeded the legal threshold for execution under the Supreme Court's ban on executing people with intellectual disabilities. The state presented inflated IQ test results to support the execution, contradicting earlier assessments and expert testimony that documented the man's significant cognitive limitations.
This case exemplifies Becerra's long record of defending capital punishment even as other Democratic officials moved away from the death penalty. As California's top attorney, Becerra consistently fought against death penalty moratoriums and blocked efforts to overturn convictions based on new evidence of innocence.
Beyond death penalty cases, Becerra's tenure as attorney general revealed a pattern of resisting police accountability measures. His office defended problematic law enforcement practices and opposed reforms that would have increased oversight of police conduct, a record that contrasts sharply with his current positioning as a progressive reform-minded gubernatorial candidate.
The revelation arrives as Becerra campaigns on a platform emphasizing criminal justice reform and racial equity. His gubernatorial run positions him as an advocate for underrepresented communities, yet his actual record as attorney general shows consistent opposition to mechanisms designed to protect vulnerable populations from state overreach.
The case underscores tensions between Becerra's prosecutorial past and his current political ambitions. California voters will evaluate whether his decades-long defense of capital punishment and resistance to police reforms align with the values he now espouses on the campaign trail. The state's death penalty system remains one of the nation's most troubling, with multiple exonerations and documented cases of prosecutorial misconduct. Becerra's active role in defending executions despite evidence of intellectual disability raises fundamental questions