Ok, I got it, I need UPDLOCK and READPAST hints together. As explained here

Tutorial

So my statement should read.

WITH Requests AS

(

Select Top(3) *

FROM ReportRequest_R2 WITH (UPDLOCK, READPAST)

WHERE Status = 'O'

...

thanks, that should help prevent deadlocking which was one concern, but I don't think it will stop the second call of the same stored procedure from reading the same rows....

oops I meant to put this in the 2005 forum