The decision was made after meetings with the woman, her family and her lawyers, the district attorney in the case, Mark Hurlbert, said.

''In every case there are ethical minimums in terms of quantity of evidence for a prosecutor to go forward,'' Hurlbert said. ''I have absolutely no doubt that those ethical standards were met and exceeded.''

He added, ''We respect her decision 100 percent.''

In a case that veered from melodrama to farce over the past year, the dissolution of the criminal trial was not entirely unexpected. Legal scholars who have closely followed it say the prosecutor's case has been steadily weakening for the past month as a result of rulings by Judge Terry Ruckriegle, the accidental release of sealed information about Bryant's accuser and, not least, the woman's own decision in early August to sue Bryant in civil court.

The civil suit was a particularly devastating blow to the prosecution, because it would have allowed Bryant's defense lawyers to portray the woman, whose name has not been officially released, as driven by greed, not a quest for justice.

But the questions that were raised by the case - specifically what happened in a hotel room last summer near Vail when a then-19-year-old front desk clerk went to Bryant's room - live on, at least in the civil suit. And now the collapse of the criminal trial raises major questions of its own, in particular whether prosecutors were rash in filing charges in the first place, or whether the evidence looked stronger at first than it did later.

The woman said they flirted, kissed and that he then became violent; he said the flirting led to consensual sex.

Bryant, an all-star player for the Los Angeles Lakers who had enjoyed a positive reputation in a game where bad-boy behavior has become common, had faced four years to life in prison, or up to life on probation, if convicted of felony sexual assault. The prosecution and defense both spent huge sums of money in testing and investigation. Court facilities and personnel in Eagle County were often overwhelmed by the storm of media attention that the case engendered. Nearly 1,000 residents received summons to appear as potential jurors, and hundreds arrived beginning last week for questioning.

Now the criminal case will apparently go away as if none of those machinations in the courtroom ever happened.

In a statement read in court by his lawyer Pamela Mackey, Bryant said, addressing his accuser:

''I want to apologize to her for my behavior that night and for the consequences she has suffered in the past year.''

He added: ''Although I truly believe this encounter between us was consensual, 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 charges have already cost Bryant dearly. Once one of the top pitchmen in professional sports, Bryant lost endorsement deals with McDonald's and Nutella in the months that followed his arrest. Although he agreed last year to a multiyear, multimillion-dollar contract with Nike, the company has yet to air a single commercial featuring the Lakers star, or release a shoe bearing his signature.