29 January 2026 :

January 28, 2026 - Texas. Charles Thompson, 55, White, was executed on January 28

Thompson was sentenced in 1999 for killing his then-girlfriend and another man. His execution in Texas is the first in the U.S. this year.

Charles Thompson was executed Wednesday evening for a 1998 double murder.

Thompson had gotten into an altercation at his then-girlfriend Dennise Hayslip’s apartment in Houston with her and her friend, Darren Cain, before a police officer escorted Thompson off the property, according to court records. Early the next morning, April 30, 1998, Thompson returned to the apartment, killing Cain and shooting Hayslip in the mouth. Hayslip was life-flighted to a nearby hospital, where she died a week later. Thompson was charged with capital murder for killing the two and sentenced to death in 1999.

Thompson was executed by lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m.. The 55-year-old apologized to Hayslip and Cain’s families in his final statement and encouraged them and his own family to “keep Jesus first.”
“There is no winners in this situation, it creates more victims and traumatizes more people 28 years later,” Thompson said.
In 2001, his death sentence was vacated by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals after judges ruled the Harris County District Attorney’s Office had unconstitutionally used an undercover investigator to obtain evidence for the trial. Thompson was given a new sentencing hearing, where a jury again sentenced him to death in 2005.
Days after his resentencing, Thompson escaped from the Harris County Jail by switching into the civilian clothes he had worn to resentencing hearings and posed as an employee with the state Attorney General’s Office. The escape led to a three-day manhunt that ended with Thompson being caught drunk in Louisiana.

On his case see also HoC 28/10/2005.

Thompson’s death marks the 1st execution in Texas this year and the 596th since Texas resumed executions in 1982. 
Thompson’s is the 1st execution of the year in the US, and the 1,655th since the nation resumed executions in 1977.

https://www.texastribune.org/2026/01/28/texas-execution-charles-thompson-2026-death-penalty/