SACRAMENTO, Calif. — California has long been what one expert calls a ‘‘symbolic death penalty state.’’ It is one of 12 that has capital punishment on the books, but it has not executed anyone in more than a decade.

Prodded by voters and lawsuits, the nation’s most populous state may now be easing back toward allowing executions, though observers are split on how quickly they will resume, if at all.

Correctional officials expect to meet a Wednesday deadline to submit revised lethal injection rules to state regulators, trying again to make technical changes after the first attempt was rejected in December.

The California Supreme Court, meanwhile, is expected to rule by August on challenges to a ballot initiative narrowly approved by voters in November that would speed up executions by reducing the time allowed for appeals.

Arkansas carried out its first execution since 2005 last week after trying to put eight inmates to death in an unprecedented series of double executions.

Courts have blocked three of the executions. Legal rulings have put at least one other in doubt.

California could come close to resuming executions in the next year, said law professor Robert Weisberg, codirector of the Stanford Criminal Justice Center, though others say too many variables and challenges remain to make a prediction.

California has by far the nation’s largest death row with nearly 750 inmates, about double that of No. 2 Florida.

The state’s proposed lethal injection regulations are patterned after a single-drug process that already passed muster with the US Supreme Court.

Correctional officials submitted the regulations only after they were forced to act by a judge’s ruling on behalf of crime victims who sued over the state’s three-year delay.

But the rules replacing California’s old method are expected to be approved at some point.

California voters have eased penalties for many crimes in recent years but have repeatedly rejected efforts to end the death penalty.