In view of (1) escalating national attention, and political and judicial activity centering on capital punishment during the past decade and a half, and (2) concomitant changes in homicides, this paper investigates the impact of the death penalty on state homicide rates for the post-Furmanperiod, 1973–84:. The research also addresses the debate over the relative merits of the contiguous state matching strategy versus multiple regression as a means of controlling for the influence of possible confounding factors in examining the capital punishment/homicide relationship. The two approaches yield quite similar results. Consistent with a long line of deterrence research, the analysis produces no indication that our national return to capital punishment sinceFurmanhas had a systematic downward impact on homicide.