We use photofragment imaging to study the internal-state and velocity distributions of methyl fragments following photodissociation of CH 3I molecules in a pulsed molecular beam by 266 nm radiation. The methyl fragments are state-selectively ionized via 2 + 1 resonance-enhanced multiphoton ionization (REMPI) through the 3p z Rydberg state. The velocity distribution for a particular internal state of the methyl radical is obtained from the images; this velocity distribution is then used to determine the branching of the methyl iodide into either the ground-state iodine, I( 2P 3 2 ), or excited-state iodine I( 2P 1 2 ), channel or the selected state of the methyl radical. We find that the branching ratio, I( 2P 3 2 )/I( 2P sol1 2 ), increases with increasing vibrational excitation in the methyl fragment. In addition, we use a line by line analysis to extract populations from the observed spectra of the 0 0 0 band of the 3p z ←X̃ transition of the CH 3 fragment. The fit reproduces the observed spectrum and represents conservation of the K quantum number (spin about the C 3 axis) upon dissociation. For internally cold parent molecules, the amount of rotational energy about the fragment figure axis is found to be about 8 cm −1 and about 106 cm −1 for rotational energy perpendicular to the figure axis.