While researching the legal terms and definitions relative to the Dan White trial (and other court cases in general) I realized that the main difference between many convictions are the intentions of the person who did the crime. For example, the difference between a conviction of murder or a conviction of manslaughter is "malice aforethought" as legislation puts it. It basically means that someone knew and planned beforehand, the crime that they would commit. This was also the main basis for the Dan White trial.
The attorneys tried to prove that Dan White could not have had "malice aforethought" because he was in an emotional bad spot. Because of financial stress, or bad eating habits, or whatever it may be, Dan became depressed and ultimately not himself. This is another problem I have with the case, but that is to be discussed at another time. In regard to malice aforethought, there were so many "clues" given to the jury that Dan did not premeditate the killings of Moscone and Milk. The fact that he did not know exactly how many shots he fired, or how unsure he was during the taped confessions were some of those pieces of evidence.
The reason that I have a problem with this is because you cannot actually tell if someone had the intention of killing or not. There is just as much evidence that he did mean to commit the killings, as proof that he did not intend to. For example, the fact that Dan was thinking to not go through the metal detector of City Hall, and climb through the window shows that he still had his common sense, and he certainly knew that he had a weapon on him that he could not reveal. Humans like so much to think that they can figure out or understand others, when in fact other's actions rarely accurately portray what is going on inside. Even though you can find physical evidence that Dan did or did not act with malice, with planning, it does not actually prove that he thought as such. For a system aiming to be mainly factual, the criminal justice system fails to dismiss stretches of evidence like this.
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