The Illinois supreme court on Thursday overturned the conviction of disgraced actor Jussie Smollett, who was previously found guilty of staging a hoax hate crime against himself and then falsely reporting it to police.

The court ruled that a special prosecutor’s decision to retry him in the case despite the Cook County state attorney’s office having previously dropped the charges against Smollett was a violation of his rights.

“We are aware that this case has generated significant public interest and that many people were dissatisfied with the resolution of the original case and believed it to be unjust,” the court ruled. “Nevertheless, what would be more unjust than the resolution of any one criminal case would be a holding from this court that the State was not bound to honor agreements upon which people have detrimentally relied.”