A man who killed two people in a 1982 courtroom shooting rampage returned to court on Monday, trying to convince a jury to give him an early parole hearing.

Kuldip Singh Samra, 59, was convicted in 1993 of two counts of first-degree murder and one count of attempted murder. He had been extradited from India, where he fled and hid for nearly a decade, after the shootings in a Toronto courtroom.

Samra returned to court Monday, trying to convince a jury to grant him a parole hearing under the so-called "faint hope" clause. If the jury approves he could go before a parole board to ask for early release.

In 1982, Samra carried a .357 revolver into an Osgoode Hall hearing related to a dispute over an election at a Sikh temple, ostensibly planning to shoot himself in protest.

Instead, he became enraged during the proceedings and opened fire, killing Bhupinder Singh Pannu and lawyer Oscar Fonseca.

Fonseca's client, Amarjit Singh Tatla, was left paralyzed in the shooting. He testified in court on Monday. Outside he described the experience of seeing the gunman again.

"He showed me his face like he's saying 'please, forgive me,'" Tatla said outside court on Monday.

After the 1982 shootings, Samra told fellow members of Toronto's Sikh community that he was "thirsty" for their blood after the shootings.

He wrote those words to members while on the run from police in the weeks after the shootings.

Samra, confronted in court on Monday with those letters, said he is no longer the stress-ridden man who committed such "evil deeds."

He said the letters, which included one signed "thirsty for your blood," were only meant to scare members of the city's Sikh community.

Samra, who has spent only 17 months of the last 13 years in a maximum-security facility, has been housed at British Columbia's Ferndale Institution since August 2001.

He testified that his time behind bars has been relatively stress-free, CTV's John Lancaster reported. Samra lives in a cabin on prison grounds and said he spends most days playing chess with other inmates.

Tatla said in court that his life has been ruined since the shooting which left him unable to take care of his wife and three children.

"It doesn't matter what they say, how many times they apologize, no they can't change anything. Mr. Fonseca is not coming back. Mr. Pannu is not coming back. I can't even walk," Tatla later said.

Victim impact statements touched some of the jurors, who were seen wiping away tears after hearing stories of lost husbands and fathers.

Fonseca's son, who followed his father and became a lawyer, took the stand as well. He described the horror of walking in to Osgoode Hall to argue a client's case, only to see the bullet hole still visible in the courtroom's pews.

Jurors are set to begin deliberating on Wednesday. If they deny Samra's faint hope request, he will return to jail for a minimum of 10 years.

With a report from CTV's John Lancaster and files from The Canadian Press