Texas Executes First Death Row Inmate Of 2026

Texas has executed its first death row inmate in the year 2026, and the first one in the United States to start the new year.

55-year-old Charles Thompson, who once escaped custody after his death sentence, was executed Wednesday night for the 1998 double murder of his girlfriend and her friend.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice says Thompson was executed via lethal injection and pronounced dead at 6:50 pm. In his last words, Cain apologized to both the victims' families. He said, "There is no winners in this situation, it creates more victims and traumatized more people twenty-eight years later...I'm sorry for what I did, I'm sorry for what happened."

He concluded by telling both the victims' families and his own to "keep Jesus first."

Thompson was in an altercation at his girlfriend Dennise Hayslip's apartment in Houston, along with her friend Darren Cain. The morning after being escorted by police off the property, Thompson returned to the apartment. He shot and killed Cain before shooting Hayslip in the mouth, injuries from which she died a week later.

He was charged with Capital Murder and sentenced to death in 1999. That was vacated in 2001 by the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals when judges ruled the Harris County District Attorney's Office unconstitutionally used an undercover investigator to obtain evidence. A jury again sentenced him to death in a new 2005 hearing.

Thompson claimed he acted in self-defense and was attacked by Cain first, also saying Hayslip died from improper medical care while being treated for her wounds. He later escaped the Harris County Jail days after his resentencing, being caught three days later drunk in Louisiana.

All of his appeals were denied.