Executive Summary
- Charles Thompson is scheduled for execution Wednesday for the 1998 murders of Dennise Hayslip and Darren Cain.
- If carried out, this will be the first execution in the United States this year.
- Defense attorneys have filed a stay request citing ineffective counsel and disputing the medical cause of the female victim’s death.
- Thompson previously escaped custody in 2005 following a resentencing hearing but was recaptured days later.
- Harris County has executed more individuals than any other state since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976.
Charles Thompson, a Texas man convicted of the 1998 double murder of his former girlfriend and her friend, is scheduled to be executed on Wednesday evening. If the lethal injection proceeds as planned, Thompson will become the first inmate put to death in the United States this year.
According to court records, the capital murder conviction stems from a fatal altercation at the Houston apartment of Thompson’s ex-girlfriend, Dennise Hayslip. Authorities state that after an initial confrontation where a police officer escorted Thompson off the property, he returned early the next morning. Prosecutors established that Thompson shot and killed Hayslip’s friend, Darren Cain, and shot Hayslip in the mouth. Hayslip was airlifted to a nearby hospital but succumbed to her injuries a week later.
Thompson was originally sentenced to death in 1999. However, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals vacated that sentence in 2001, ruling that the Harris County District Attorney’s Office had unconstitutionally utilized an undercover investigator to gather evidence. Following a new sentencing hearing in 2005, a jury again returned a death sentence. The case gained further attention when Thompson escaped from the Harris County Jail days after his resentencing. Using civilian clothes and posing as an employee of the state Attorney General’s Office, he fled the facility, leading to a three-day manhunt that ended with his capture in Louisiana.
On January 21, Thompson’s legal team filed a new appeal and a request for a stay of execution with the Court of Criminal Appeals. The filing questions the effectiveness of his trial counsel and reasserts previous claims regarding Hayslip’s cause of death. Thompson contends that Hayslip would have survived the gunshot wound had she not received an alleged “improper intubation” at the hospital. The appeal includes an affidavit from a doctor who testified at the original trial, who now states she would attribute the death to medical complications. As of this report, the court has not issued a ruling on the stay request.
Judicial Proceedings & Capital Punishment
The scheduled execution of Charles Thompson highlights the ongoing application of the death penalty in Texas, particularly within Harris County, which has accounted for 136 executions since the reinstatement of capital punishment in 1976—more than any other state. As the first scheduled execution in the nation this year, this case underscores the rigorous appellate process inherent in capital cases, often spanning decades. The focus now rests on the Court of Criminal Appeals regarding the pending stay request, a procedural step that frequently continues until the final hours before a scheduled execution.
