When the United States became an independent nation, with its own Constitution, such arrived in a day and age, in which there was not a formal police system; but rather the governor of each individual State, was often the personage in charge of selecting each individual sheriff that thereupon was the enforcer of the laws throughout a given jurisdiction, and of which, the assistance to that sheriff, typically came from that community of people, itself, rather than their being some sort of formal posse or policing arm, so sanctioned by the state. This thus signified that since the necessary help provided to the sheriff came from the people, that the people were more directly involved in the justice so served. At the same time, this also meant, that personal prejudices against those that did not neatly fit into the orthodox beliefs of that time, were therefore more susceptible to prejudiced and unjustified legal actions against them. Yet, to a very large extent, this is, when honestly examined, essentially true of criminal justice so enacted in the present day and age.
Back then, unlike today's courtrooms, with its formal trial conditions, the justice so rendered in colonial times, was far swifter, and typically consisted not of some sort of formal incarceration, but depended almost exclusively upon public shaming, as well as its corresponding corporal punishment. In addition, for those that were particular difficult malcontents, communities exercised their right to banish such from that community, under penalty of severe corporal punishment, including even death, if that given person was to be obstinate and to thereby return. So then, unlike today's course of justice which is often slow, meandering, and cumbersome, the colonial times were all about nearly immediate punishment done in a manner in which the hope would be that by public shaming this would thereupon impress upon those bad actors the need thereby for them to subsequently conform to community standards.
Yet, as much as some things have changed; fundamentally a lot of our criminal justice system effectively is as it has always been. In other words, back then, those that were connected, of high value and importance, as well as being well placed, were always treated differently by that colonial justice than such that were considered to be the rabble of that time. In other words, those that had power or position in their own right were treated differently than those that lacked those very things. So too, laws so written and exercised to be equally applied to all, were selectively applied and thereby exercised specifically against those that were considered to be thorns in the side of those "good" members of that society.
Although the United States, is considered to be a "classless" society, in fact, its criminal justice system from its inception, has always dealt with people according to their perceived class and position; of which, those that are in the upper echelons of that society, are almost always able to avail themselves of every loophole, appeal, and the full power of superb attorneys, as compared to all those that lack those very things; of which, the application of that criminal justice system, deliberately is done in a manner in which, those that lack power, class, and position, are subject to the full force of the law, whereas those that represent those very attributes, and are often protected from suffering from such. So that, in effect, today or years gone by, those accused of a given crime, essentially receive the justice so correlated with the position that they represent in that society.