In the U.S.A., 27 states maintain the death penalty, as of 2025. However, whereas some states actively carry out executions, other states hesitate to execute criminals; for example, New Hampshire had implemented the death penalty just once from 1977 to 2015, but Florida and California have implemented the law over two hundred times during the same period. What makes the difference? In this study we investigate the factors that affect states’ executions. We find that states’ punitiveness is not consistently correlated with its actual number of executions that states carry out, but states with harsher sentencing laws are less likely to be one of the states that never execute. Also, we found a moderating effect of the state legislature, in that states with Republican governors exhibit a higher propensity to carry out executions when backed by a unified Republican legislature. This research serves as a critical nexus between descriptive and empirical scholarship on death penalty executions and provides a foundation for further empirical tests.

□ Key Words: Punitiveness, Death Penalty, Execution, State Legislature, Symbolic Policy