Regrettably, the nation’s first execution of 2026 took place in Texas last night, January 28, 2026, when Charles Thompson was put to death. He was convicted of killing Dennise Hayslip, his on-and-off girlfriend, and her friend Darren Cain in 1998 in Tomball (a Houston suburb) during what appeared to be a crime of passion. Thompson, who was 55, spent nearly 27 years on death row.
Thompson used his final moments to apologize to the families of Hayslip and Cain and asked for their forgiveness. “There is no winners in this situation, it creates more victims and traumatizes more people 28 years later,” Thompson said.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) vacated Thompson’s death sentence in 2001 and remanded his case for a new punishment trial. Harris County prosecutors again sought the death penalty, which was handed down by a jury in 2005.
Earlier this week, the Texas CCA denied Thompson’s motion for a stay of execution and dismissed his habeas application in which he raised five claims: (1) the trial court violated his Sixth Amendment right to counsel by eliciting statements from an informant; (2) and (3) the trial court violated his confrontation and due process rights; (4) the medical examiner’s changed testimony entitles him to relief; and (5) his counsel on the punishment retrial were ineffective in their investigation and presentation of mitigating evidence. The Court dismissed the application as an abuse of the writ without reviewing the merits of the claims raised.
On Monday, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles declined to recommend clemency for Thompson.
Thompson asked the Supreme Court of the United States to grant a stay of execution and filed a cert petition asserting he was denied his Sixth Amendment Right to confront the medical examiner who performed Ms. Hayslip’s autopsy. The Court denied both requests a couple of hours before the scheduled execution.
This was the first execution scheduled under Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, who took office in 2025. According to the Associated Press, Teare witnessed the execution.
If Harris County was its own state, it would rank second only to Texas in the number of people executed. Since 1982, 136 people convicted in Harris County have been put to death; jurors there have sentenced 300 people to death and 62 people convicted in Harris County remain on death row. Of these, 44 people have spent more than 20 years on death row.
Texas has scheduled three more executions through the middle of May. All three men are Black and were convicted in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.