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Notes -
That's probably a good general rule of thumb, but the practice of calling a defendant to the stand and trying to portray their claims as self-serving is not limited to Law and Order or the Rittenhouse trial.
And Alnaji's stipulations do seem pretty self-serving, at least as his defense lawyer claims were accepted by the judge. "Had a dispute" falters a lot worse if, as the publicly available information suggests, Alnaji's group moved toward Kessler to confront them, rather than being approached. "Accident" turns from 'tots couldn't have predicted this could have happened' into 'I didn't mean to kill him' if Alnaji's was actually trying to hit the man with a megaphone.
Now, that just affects judicial sympathy (uh, optimistically: Milan seems a putz). But then there's the actual enhancements...
As you noticed before, a megaphone can "armed with and using a weapon", something that allows the matter to go from a jail sentence to a prison sentence. I also can't find evidence that it actually requires 'intent' to use as a weapon under California law, either. Similarly, it does matter whether Kessler was especially vulnerable, and while it also seems like something where Alnaji didn't strictly need to 'know' that the 69-year-old was an old, fragile guy, it's a pretty strong way to demonstrate it.
That impacts the sentence in a fuzzy 'the judge can go this high' way. Now, that's something the court was predisposed to accept and still give a shorter and mostly non-custodial sentence as part of the tots-not-a-judicial-plea-bargain. But it also leaves a record that can be reviewed for things like an unlawful sentence.
And when that fails -- because we're still talking California -- it leaves the case in high company with examples like Latasha Harlins, aka the other cause of the Rodney King riots. Which still has relevance for prosecutors, even if it never impacts a court room directly.
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