While capital punishment is the most severe criminal penalty, little is known about the factors that influence jurisdictional differences in the use of the death penalty. The current study focused on the role of political and religious beliefs and racial threat as possible factors influencing jurisdictional differences in the use of capital punishment. The authors hypothesized that death sentences would be most likely in jurisdictions characterized by conservative political beliefs and by fundamentalist Protestant religious beliefs. Additionally, the authors hypothesized that death sentences would be more likely in jurisdictions with larger African-American and Hispanic populations. The research methods involved a State-level analysis in which the authors ruled out various theoretically relevant explanations using two-equation count models. Results indicated that death sentences are indeed more likely in jurisdictions with greater membership in conservative churches and in jurisdictions with higher violent crime rates. The findings also suggest that political conservativism and racial threat explain whether a State has ever used the death penalty, but they do not explain the number of death sentences beyond one. The results support claims that the use of the death penalty is an intensively political process that involves deeply held religious beliefs. Notes, references