Father wants killer to die

Murder victims' kin plan to push to restart executions

Robert Jackson cannot understand why anyone would care whether death row inmates suffer when lethal injection is administered, especially if the murderers tormented their victims.

Jackson's 11-year-old daughter, Amy, was raped and stabbed to death in 1995 by Archie Billings, who also tried to kill Jackson's son, Bobby, stabbing him 23 times.

Billings is one of five inmates whose executions have been delayed as courts struggle with whether North Carolina's method of lethal injection is constitutional. The death penalty gridlock is the result of several inmates suing over the chance they could suffer painful executions, which would violate the U.S. Constitution's prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

"The argument about whether lethal injection causes pain to the ones on death row has really gone too far," Jackson said in a letter to Gov. Mike Easley.

This week, murder victims' relatives plan to lobby lawmakers to pass a solution to the death penalty hiatus. So far, Easley and the Democrats who control the legislature appear content to let the courts resolve the matter, which could take years. As far as Jackson is concerned, Billings is already guaranteed too pleasant a death. "For him to get nothing but lethal injection is a cheap way out for what he did to Amy," Jackson said in an interview last week. "He'll never go through the trauma that she went through, never, not even close to it, not even a one percent chance."

Billings, 33, appears to agree. In an interview with Reader's Digest published in 1998 he said, "This will be an easy out for me. What happened to Amy was a lot more painful. If I should die, I guess I should be tortured the way the evidence shows Amy and Bobby were."

One of Billings' lawyers refused a request to interview his client.

Twelve years ago, Jackson and his two children were living in a trailer on a Caswell County dairy farm where Jackson worked. Billings, then 21, had been hired to work there only months before. No one at the dairy suspected Billings had a criminal record. He had been convicted of secret peeping and faced assault charges in the shooting of his brother.

In the early morning hours of July 7, 1995, Billings sneaked into the Jacksons' trailer knowing the children would be home alone because their father would be milking the herd of Holstein cows.

Because of the noise from the fans and machinery inside the milking parlor, Robert Jackson said he did not hear his children's screams or the sirens of ambulances and police cars. He only found out what happened when his boss came to the barn to tell Jackson that his son was hurt and his daughter was missing.

Caswell District Attorney Joel Brewer said Bobby Jackson, then 13, awoke to being repeatedly stabbed by Billings. As his sister was raped in his father's bedroom, Bobby crawled into the kitchen, the prosecutor said. Billings stabbed him again, and then Bobby decided to play dead. Meanwhile, Brewer said, Amy would have assumed her brother was dead as she fled across a bean field in the middle of the night, only to have Billings catch up to her. The prosecutor said Billings plunged a knife into Amy's throat and raped her again.

"For this to happen to an 11-year-old child, it's just as bad as any crime could be," Brewer said.

Bobby was able to crawl to the phone in the kitchen and call 911. Brewer recalled the scene inside the trailer: "This looked like it was a house with blood for wainscoting. It looked like the bottom half of the trailer had been painted red with his blood."

Amy's body was found later that morning. Bobby eventually recovered from his stab wounds. A year later, Billings was sentenced to death.

Robert Jackson, 44, and his wife, Shana, have since moved to Broadway, outside Sanford. Jackson and his wife were separated at the time of the murder but have been back together ever since. Robert Jackson has given up dairy farming -- a calling he misses -- and now works as a heavy machine operator for a grading company in Garner.

His son, Bobby, now 24, is enrolled in a Job Corps program in Virginia, studying to become a welder and an electrician.

In his letter to the governor, Jackson said his son may have recovered physically, but the emotional pain will last a lifetime.

Meanwhile, Jackson noted, Billings has spent the last 12 years in prison -- a year more than his daughter had to live.