Kobe Bryant won’t see any jail time.

I know. It came as a shock to me as well. I mean the evidence was all there for a conviction:

A rich, successful black man had sex with a promiscuous white woman. I can see why the young lady would accuse Bryant of rape. Who couldn’t?

How about no one?

Committing adultery is the only thing the Los Angeles Lakers star is guilty of. He confessed that to the public and more importantly his wife, Vanessa, in a press conference last summer.

But there is something that Bryant is and has always been charged with: Arrogance.

Just hours after the prosecution had announced last Wednesday that they were not going forward with the trial, Bryant and his legal team released this statement, “Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual,” Bryant said,

“I recognize now that she did not and does not view this incident the same way I did. After months of reviewing discovery, listening to her attorney, and even her testimony in person, I now understand how she feels that she did not consent to this encounter.”

The nerve of this jackass.

Let me first say that I am not a fan of Bryant. As a Sacramento Kings fan, I have seen Bryant on more than one occasion rip out the hearts of Kings supporters over the years.

I even hoped that he would be found guilty of the crime and be put away for a long time because I dislike him so much (not because I hoped he actually raped the woman, because raping a woman is the most severe act of cowardice a man can ever commit against a woman).

But, by all accounts, Bryant was exonerated. Yet he had the gall to admit that now he acknowledges that the sex between him and his accuser was not consensual on her part.

Questions or comments? The State Hornet’s Danny Pinto can be reached via email at [email protected]If O.J. Simpson had released a statement after being found not guilty of killing Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman stating that he was involved in the murders, he would have been hunted down, tarred, feathered, and thrown off a bridge with his Heisman trophy tied around his feet.

But there is no outcry. In a vague way, he admitted to the crime that he was accused of, and he walked.

The statement that Bryant released shows nothing more than a celebrity getting off the hook because of his celebrity.

Even though the accuser’s sexual background did nothing to help her cause, it doesn’t mean that she couldn’t have been raped. Sometimes a liar tells the truth and sometimes a thief actually pays for something.

But now we’ll never know. Bryant used his superstar celebrity against his accuser’s checkered past and won.

The civil suit that she filed probably will never come to fruition because Bryant will settle out of court by giving her the lump sum of money that many have accused her of going after in the first place.

But that’s how Bryant and celebrities do things when it comes to the law: Flash some cash and everything will be all right.

I just hope Kobe is free because he didn’t rape the woman, not simply because he is Kobe Bryant.