A remorseless killer who admitted gunning down his ex-girlfriend and her male friend at the Richmond-San Rafael Bridge toll plaza giggled Wednesday as jurors filed into court to deliver a verdict in his double murder trial.

"I already know what's going to happen," said Nathan Burris.

So did everyone else. The 49-year-old trucker - who had confessed on the witness stand, saying, "I did it. So what?" - was convicted of two counts of murder with special circumstances, sending him to a death penalty hearing just a day after California voters declined to ban capital punishment.

Burris, who represented himself, put on an extraordinary show of callousness during a two-week trial in Contra Costa County Superior Court in Martinez, laughing and cursing his victims. But in the end, his victims' relatives said they got some satisfaction.

"For the first time, he didn't have much to say today," said Kenneth Everette, 51, of San Pablo, whose brother was slain. "He was bullying everyone in the court, but he had no say in this. It's out of his hands."

Burris was convicted of going on a shotgun rampage on Aug, 11, 2009. He killed toll-taker Deborah Ross, 51, who had recently decided to leave him after a 13-year relationship, and her friend Ersie Everette III, 58, a Golden Gate Transit driver who was courting her and had been visiting her at the toll plaza.

The jury found Burris guilty of two counts of first-degree murder, plus the special circumstances of lying in wait and killing multiple victims, which qualified him for execution. A death penalty hearing, during which the prosecution presents its case for why a defendant should be executed, is set to begin Thursday in front of the same jury. It will decide if Burris should die or serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Burris told Superior Court Judge John W. Kennedy that his defense in the penalty hearing "won't take very long. Maybe two to three minutes. I haven't decided yet."

The hearing would not have happened if voters on Tuesday had passed Proposition 34 to repeal California's death penalty. The measure would have applied retroactively to more than 720 condemned inmates in the state, where executions have been on hold since 2006 over complaints about staff training and procedures for lethal injections.

Burris said this week that he cares little about his sentence, because California "doesn't know how to kill anybody."

Relatives of Ross and Everette asked prosecutors not to seek the death penalty against Burris - not to spare him, but because they see a life sentence as more severe. Still, they said they were not upset that the county pressed ahead.

"I want him to wake up every day and relive what he did," said Tyrice Ross, 63, of Oakland, whose sister was killed. "I don't want his suffering to stop."

Several family members said they voted to repeal the death penalty. Some said they went to the polls thinking about big-picture issues, like the cost of capital punishment and the potential for the wrongly convicted to be killed. But others said they were voting on Burris' fate alone.

"I was voting particularly for him," said Everette's stepbrother, 58-year-old Dannie Hollans of Hayward. "He seems to want the privacy of Death Row. I want him bothered. I want him inconvenienced."

If Burris does get the death penalty, Hollans said, "Hopefully I live long enough to see it come to pass. ... I consider myself a pretty well-rounded, easy-going person, but I've never felt so much rage for a person in my life."
