{"id":140168,"date":"2026-01-27T20:04:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-27T20:04:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/140168\/"},"modified":"2026-01-27T20:04:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-27T20:04:10","slug":"harris-county-man-set-for-texas-first-execution-of-2026-houston-public-media","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/140168\/","title":{"rendered":"Harris County man set for Texas\u2019 first execution of 2026 \u2013 Houston Public Media"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\t\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

Michael Minasi | KUT News<\/p>\n

The Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, or Huntsville Unit, opened in 1849 and houses Texas’ execution chamber.<\/p>\n

Texas is set to carry out its first execution of the year Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Charles Victor Thompson, 55, was sentenced to death<\/a> in 1999 for two murders he committed a year prior in Houston. Thompson shot his ex-girlfriend, Dennise Hayslip, and another man, Darren Cain, after showing up to Hayslip’s apartment and kicking down the door. Police had been called to the apartment for a disturbance the night before and escorted Thompson away, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.<\/p>\n

Cain died at the scene. Hayslip was transported to a hospital, where she died a week later.<\/p>\n

Thompson made national headlines<\/a> in 2005 when he escaped Harris County Jail during a retrial of his case. He was found days later in Shreveport, Louisiana, more than 200 miles away.<\/p>\n

Thompson’s case is also the subject of an episode of the Netflix docuseries<\/a> “I Am A Killer.”<\/p>\n

The execution is the first of four<\/a> scheduled in Texas this year. Once the leader in the number of death sentences carried out in the U.S., Texas has seen a decline in executions in recent years, according to a recent report<\/a> from the Texas Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michael Minasi | KUT News The Texas State Penitentiary at Huntsville, or Huntsville Unit, opened in 1849 and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140169,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[55453,2314,2315,59130,405,56,58,2542,57,66,223,27,59131],"class_list":["post-140168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-charles-victor-thompson","tag-criminal-justice","tag-death-penalty","tag-death-row-in-texas","tag-harris-county","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-murder-case","tag-houston-news","tag-local","tag-news","tag-texas","tag-texas-executions"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140168"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140168\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}