It’s unsettling to witness the vitriol directed at Chicago prosecutors who dropped charges on Tuesday against actor Jussie Smollett—who has already been tried and convicted in the court of public opinion of staging his own hate crime attack.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the decision by veteran prosecutor Joseph Magats to dismiss the case “without a doubt a whitewash of justice.” The city’s police superintendent Eddie Johnson was “furious” according to the Chicago-Sun Times. The police commander who oversaw the investigation called it “a kick in the gut.”