FARGO - The slow pace of the start of the Alfonso Rodriguez Jr. trial has led the judge to put a time limit on questions of potential jurors.

After two days of interviews, three candidates from a pool of 590 have been allowed to move into the next round of jury selection, which court officials want to finish by the end of the month. That leaves 67 spots to fill so that 12 jurors and four alternates can be chosen later from the pool of 70.

U.S. District Judge Ralph Erickson adjourned court early Monday and issued an order that would limit lawyers to 10 minutes each for their interviews of potential jurors.

The proceedings so far "have been unnecessarily drawn out by repetitive questioning," the judge's order said.

Rodriguez, 53, a convicted sex offender from Crookston, Minn., is charged with kidnapping resulting in the death of University of North Dakota student Dru Sjodin. He has pleaded not guilty.

Of the eight jury candidates interviewed on Monday, two were approved, five were rejected and one was put on hold. Overall, nine of 13 people interviewed have been excused.

Erickson said at Monday's session that he and the lawyers may be slowing down jury selection by "building a body of confusion" during interviews. Some of the questions were "not as artful as they may have been," the judge said.

Prosecutors have said they will seek the death penalty if Rodriguez is convicted. Defense attorney Richard Ney, who specializes in capital punishment cases, objected to at least four potential jurors on Monday who said they thought Rodriguez was guilty or deserved the death penalty if found guilty.

One of the excused candidates said she talked to 10 people in her small town about the death penalty, and nine of them believed Rodriguez should be executed.

Two candidates made race an issue, including one woman who said her bias against Hispanics would make it difficult for her to be on the jury. Her opinion wasn't discovered until the interview in court because she forgot to fill out some pages on the original questionnaire.

U.S. Attorney Drew Wrigley objected to one of Monday's candidates, a man who said the death penalty should be imposed only in limited cases. He was dismissed by Erickson.

Ney and Wrigley continued to bicker over the nature of each other's questions, leading Erickson to ask that they "tone down the rhetoric" after an argument before the lunch break.

The first potential juror of the day was approved with little debate, but Wrigley and Ney later accused each other of trying to manipulate candidates. Erickson yelled "stop" at them twice.

Each day's proceedings are normally scheduled to run until about 4:30 p.m. On Monday, Erickson called off court 30 minutes early after Ney objected to the interview format. The judge issued his order shortly after that.