Particle.news
Download on the App Store

Texas Executes Charles Victor Thompson in First U.S. Execution of 2026

Final denials by the Supreme Court alongside the parole board ended the case after decades of appeals.

Overview

  • Thompson, 55, was pronounced dead at 6:50 p.m. CST Wednesday after a lethal injection at the Huntsville Unit, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
  • He was convicted for the April 1998 shootings of ex-girlfriend Dennise Hayslip, 39, and her boyfriend Darren Cain, 30, at Hayslip’s apartment near Houston.
  • In final remarks, Thompson apologized and asked the families for forgiveness, as relatives and Harris County prosecutors described the execution as closing a long chapter.
  • Defense filings argued Hayslip died from flawed medical care and raised confrontation-rights claims, but courts rejected those arguments and a clemency request was denied.
  • Thompson’s original death sentence was vacated before a 2005 resentencing; days later he escaped the Harris County Jail and was recaptured in Shreveport, Louisiana.