Barry Fairchild, black, is scheduled to be executed in Arkansas on 31 August 1995 for a murder where judges recognise he was not the killer. He was sentenced to death in August 1993. He was convicted largely on two videotaped confessions which he later recanted and which his lawyers maintain were made under duress. They were obtained in police custody before Fairchild was allowd to consult a lawyer. It is also alleged that while in custody Fairchild was beaten by the police and badly bitten by a police dog. According to his current lawyers he is mentally retarded, but this evidence was not presented to the jury at his original trial.
