While state legislatures have been at the center of shaping death penalty statutes during the 2000s, so have governors at rare but crucial moments. The ability to issue gubernatorial vetoes has been used not only to prevent abolition from occurring, but also to bar the state from enacting legislation to expand it. However, little is known about what factors affect the likelihood of a governor deciding to veto these often highly controversial bills. This is surprising considering the pivotal role governors can sometimes play in this context, able to grant clemencies to varying degrees and also impose death penalty moratoriums. This article examines gubernatorial vetoes in the context of death penalty legislation, assessing the extent to which institutional constraints as well as individual aspects affect the use of vetoes. Empirical analysis of a unique dataset comprised of enacted and vetoed legislation pertaining to capital punishment in 38 states from 1999 through 2018 suggest that individual attributes, and to a lesser extent institutional aspects, have an effect on the likelihood of a governor issuing a veto in the legislative context of capital punishment, but that this also greatly depends on the type of bill. I argue that both individual features and institutional design are useful when examining the many varieties of capital punishment in the U.S. and how governors participate in shaping death penalty statutes.