SACRAMENTO — Democrat Xavier Becerra defended the death penalty while serving as California’s attorney general, a punishment his office actively sought in the case of a gunman convicted of an Orange County mass shooting, but as the front-running candidate for governor he has vowed to block executions if elected in November.
Becerra said he will extend the blanket reprieve for all death row inmates that Gov. Gavin Newsom enacted by executive order in 2019, saying he supported “moving our state away from a costly, flawed system that disproportionately impacts Black and brown communities and too often gets it wrong.”
Those comments have reassured anti-death penalty advocates wary of Becerra, who has stated throughout his career that capital punishment should be an option for victims seeking justice. He reiterated that stance just a decade ago during his confirmation hearing for attorney general, though he also expressed concerns about the unjust application of the punishment.
“I support the death penalty, but I hate the way it’s being executed,” Becerra told state lawmakers in 2017.
“If you commit some heinous crime where you have taken the life of someone else, and you knew that there was a death penalty in place in that place where you committed that crime, then you should face the punishment for what you’ve done,” he explained. “It doesn’t give me pleasure to say that, but I simply do believe there’s a simple justice in that.”
Becerra’s challenger in the Nov. 3 election, former Fox News commentator Steve Hilton, opposes the death penalty but said he would rescind Newsom’s moratorium because it defies the will of voters.
Becerra has said he is concerned by how death sentences historically have been applied, including a highly disproportionate number of condemned inmates who are Black or Latino men and cases in which they later have been exonerated of crimes.
He repeated similar positions last year during a gubernatorial forum in Los Angeles.
“I do not believe every Californian has gotten a fair verdict in these fights,” he said in response to a question about extending Newsom’s moratorium. “But here is what I will tell you: We have to be aggressive in going after crime, especially the most heinous crime. … I will make sure that we have a judiciary system and a prosecution system that takes into account that we must show fairness.”
Though California has not performed an execution since 2006, prosecutors in some areas of the state continue to seek and win death sentences. As of early August, there were 565 condemned inmates in California prisons, according to the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Newsom’s moratorium stops the state from carrying out those sentences.
In California, county district attorneys are responsible for prosecuting the vast majority of accused murderers when they go to trial and also deciding whether to seek the death penalty. The office of the state attorney general is responsible for defending death penalty convictions on appeal.
Becerra sought the death penalty in a murder case his office prosecuted early in his tenure, though unsuccessfully. Scott Dekraai, who was convicted of killing his ex-wife and seven others in a shooting at a Seal Beach beauty salon, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a prosecution scandal involving his case.
Some death penalty opponents criticized Becerra for fighting to uphold the death sentence of Robert Lewis Jr., who was deemed by the California Supreme Court in 2018 to have an intellectual disability that made him ineligible for execution.
“I find that reprehensible,” said Mike Farrell, president of Death Penalty Focus, an advocacy group. A longtime anti-death penalty activist, Farrell is better-known for starring as B.J. Hunnicutt in the TV show “M*A*S*H.”
“It may not have been his idea, but he was part of that process,” he said of Becerra.
Others said Becerra cannot be blamed for doing his job. Former Vice President Kamala Harris faced the same dilemma when she served as state attorney general, as does Rob Bonta, who currently holds the office.
“The AG is in a different position because it’s just inherent in their role to defend convictions and sentences,” said Natasha Minsker of the California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition. “For example, Kamala Harris is very strongly personally opposed to the death penalty and still, while she was AG, the office defended hundreds of death sentences. Same with Rob Bonta. He’s very clearly personally against the death penalty, and his office continues to defend death sentences.”
Becerra’s campaign declined an interview on the subject and referred to his statement in support of extending Newsom’s freeze on executions.
Hilton, his Republican opponent in the race, holds starkly different views.
“If you’re arguing that taking a life is such a serious crime, then I don’t think responding by taking a life actually makes that argument,” he said in an interview last month.
But he said California voters spoke clearly by voting twice — in 2012 and 2016 — against ballot measures that would have repealed the death penalty. “I don’t think it’s OK for a governor to just substitute their personal opinion on an issue where the voters had an explicit and direct say,” he said.
“I strongly believe in holding people accountable for what they do,” Hilton said. “But my sort of fundamental belief is that if we’re saying it’s wrong to kill someone, then the state shouldn’t be doing it, either.”
Hilton also would roll back Democratic-led reforms that have shortened many inmates’ prison sentences by allowing them to seek parole sooner.
End or extend? It’s not that simple
Even if a governor rescinds the moratorium, resuming executions would be a long and complicated process because the state has no approved protocol or facilities to carry out death sentences.
Newsom ordered the dismantling of San Quentin’s death row and execution chamber. Even before he took office, the state’s use of lethal injection drugs was part of a long-running and now-dormant legal battle. And a dwindling number of attorneys who specialize in death penalty cases meant 70% of condemned inmates did not have a lawyer at the end of last year, according to a state report.
California’s death penalty also faces a new legal challenge from groups arguing that capital punishment cases have been administered in a way that is racially discriminatory. In May, the California Supreme Court ordered the attorney general’s office to respond to the arguments and assigned the case to a superior court.
The shifts in California’s criminal justice system are reflected in legal battles waged by the pro-death penalty Criminal Justice Legal Foundation, a nonprofit that supports victims of crime and their families in court.
“We used to do a lot of work in the capital punishment area because that was the area where justice and the sentences were under the greatest attack,” said Kent Scheidegger, the group’s legal director.
But as California’s Democratic-controlled Legislature, governor and, at times, voters adopted measures aimed at reducing the prison population, Scheidegger said the foundation’s efforts increasingly are focused on preserving “the finality of sentences.”
Many capital cases were negotiated as “plea bargains to life without parole on the express promise that this will provide the finality that the victims need most,” he said. “Life without possibility of parole, until recently, meant life without possibility of parole. And now we’ve got one action after another coming out of the government to break down that finality and give people sentenced to life without parole opportunities to get out.”
The group has challenged attempts to expand early release for violent offenders under 2016’s Proposition 57 and new regulations that would allow people sentenced to life without the possibility of parole to seek release.
Twenty-seven states allow the death penalty, but governors in four of them — California, Ohio, Oregon and Pennsylvania — have paused executions.
Slow shifts in public opinion
Attitudes about capital punishment have shifted over time. A 2025 Gallup poll showed 52% of Americans favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, down from its peak of 80% in 1994.
In a 2023 survey by the Public Policy Institute of California, 62% of adults in the state said they “strongly favor” or “somewhat favor” the death penalty in murder cases. When asked which punishment they prefer for a first-degree murder case, 55% said life without parole and 43% chose the death penalty. More than three-quarters believe there “is some risk that an innocent person will be put to death.”
Despite the changing opinions, Minsker, of the California Anti-Death Penalty Coalition, said there’s little appetite for another repeal attempt because of how expensive ballot measure campaigns have become.
“I am personally one of the strongest proponents of ending the death penalty, and I am not sure I would spend $30 million on that right now, given all the other needs that California has,” said Minsker, a former attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union who ran the unsuccessful 2012 death penalty repeal measure.
Putting an anti-death penalty measure on the statewide ballot also could have put Newsom in an precarious political position. If it failed, Californians would be sending a stinging rebuke to the Democratic governor’s executive decision to grant a blanket reprieve to all condemned inmates.
Minsker is leading a group of criminal justice advocates, faith organizations, prosecutors, murder victim family members and others urging Newsom to commute every death sentence in California before he leaves office.
But advocates are unsure whether Newsom, who is considering a run for president in 2028, would risk the backlash a mass commutation would probably bring. The California Supreme Court also must review executive clemency actions for inmates with more than one felony charge.
Commuting all death sentences to life in prison “would be the coup de grâce,” Farrell said. “However, politically, I’m sure those who are advising him are urging him to have caution in that regard.”