North Carolina prison officials expect to administer lethal injection to three inmates within three weeks after setting execution dates Tuesday for two more inmates.

James Edward Thomas, 50, is scheduled to be executed Feb. 2 for the 1986 murder of Teresa Ann West in a Raleigh boarding house. Thomas strangled West with a pair of pantyhose, then used a pillow to suffocate her while sexually assaulting her.

West's uncle, Pete Bland, a former state senator and former sheriff from Craven County, said the news would please his sister, the victim's mother.

"Not that she's vindictive," Bland said. "But she wanted justice to be accomplished."

A week later, on Feb. 9, James Adolph Campbell, 45, is set to die by lethal injection for the 1992 murder of Katherine Price. The 19-year-old woman's nude body was found in a rural western Rowan County field. Investigators say she had been strangled, twice raped and stabbed 31 times.

Already scheduled was the Jan. 26 execution of Marcus Reymond Robinson, 33, who was sentenced to death for the July 1991 killing of Erik Tornblom in Cumberland County.