Regrettably, the nation’s first execution of 2026 is scheduled to take place in Texas tonight, Wednesday, January 28, 2026, when Charles Thompson is set to be 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, now 55, has spent nearly 27 years on death row.
The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals (CCA) vacated Thompson’s death sentence in 2001 and remanded this case for a new punishment trial. Harris County prosecutors again sought the death penalty, which was handed down by a jury in 2005.
Yesterday, 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.
This is also the first execution scheduled under Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare, who took office in 2025.
If Harris County was its own state, it would rank second only to Texas in the number of people executed. Since 1982, 135 people convicted in Harris County have been put to death; jurors there have sentenced 300 people to death and 64 people convicted in Harris County remain on death row. Of these, 45 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.