I think that attitude is willfully naive. Nobody likes having to go to court, it often costs thousands of dollars in legal fees if you don't want to take a risk. The "Send them to court and they'll be vindicated if they're right" attitude doesn't excuse using selective or vindictive law enforcement. Do you think they're going to send every single protester to court, or just the one who got millions of views?

Also without any transparency into randomness of how judges and jurors are picked, and a absurdly large number of laws, there's definitely major room for bending the law to one's will.

One example of this, though not the worst abuse, is OJ's 2008 prosecution where he got 9-33 years, and his accomplice who brought the gun got probation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O._J._Simpson_robbery_case