The second the Anwar Phillips verdict was read, I could already hear the calls into talk radio and read the letters to the editor. The cries against preferential treatment for athletes had to be coming out around Center County and the Penn State community.

Those same cries will assuredly come out across the country if Los Angeles Lakers guard Kobe Bryant is acquitted on charges that he sexually assaulted a young Colorado woman.

It's hard not to feel for the people who will be making the claims of preferential treatment. It's possible the woman involved in the Phillips case was denied justice, and it is possible the same could happen to the woman involved in Bryant's case. This has to be excruciating, not just for the women involved, but for all women. Women need a judicial decision that says it doesn't matter what kind of social or professional status a man has, if he does something sexual to a woman without her consent, he will pay the price.

But unfortunately for them, it's going to take either a heck of a case or a gung-ho jury with no regard for the American justice system to get it. Phillips wasn't acquitted because he was a football player, and it is possible that Bryant could be found not guilty by a jury that gives no regard to his status as an NBA superstar.

That's because sexual assault can be a crime without evidence, as it was in the Phillips case, and that makes it very hard for prosecutors to get convictions. The outcome of the Phillips case, and likely the not guilty verdict of many others, have little to do with the status of the man, and everything to do with the fact that the nature of the crime makes it a he-said, she-said case.

A rape case requires evidence that force was used, and if it's not there, the prosecution doesn't have a case.

If it is, the case becomes much easier for the prosecution. However, in a sexual assault case, the prosecution usually has to prove that the woman did not consent to sexual activity.

Ordinarily, the only two people who actually know first hand whether sex was consensual are the parties involved. There you have conflicting stories, there you have reasonable doubt, there you have an acquittal. Even if a jury wants to make a statement, it won't do it unless its sure. It's tough to make a statement when to do so you have to sentence someone to 10 years in prison.

So some people try to give a more concrete definition to consent, acting as though it should be treated like contractual law, and that if a woman doesn't basically sign a paper before hand she isn't giving consent. This would surely make it easier to bring down the guys who deserve it, but it would also make it way too easy to nail the guys who don't. Anyone who thinks every consensual sex act involves a discussion before hand is ridiculous. If every guy who didn't ask before hand could go to jail, most guys who are married or in long-term relationships could be in prison.

The idea that any drunken woman is incapable of consent is also unfair, especially if the legal definition for drunkenness is used. There is a big difference between the amount of alcohol you have to drink before you're too drunk to drive and the amount needed to take away your capacity for making any kind of decisions. It's dead wrong to take advantage of a drunk woman and any man that does so should be punished accordingly.

However, a woman isn't being taken advantage of every time she has sex when drunk, including instances in which the man is also drunk. If a woman decides after the fact that she didn't want to do something she willingly did when she was drunk, the man she did it with shouldn't have to pay for that if he wasn't deliberately trying to take advantage of her.

So in the end, the stalemate remains. Look at consent in the vague way it's now seen, and it's hard to get a sexual assault conviction. Make sex work like a business transaction with contracts and it's too easy.

The beauty of the American justice system is that you're innocent until proven guilty, and as frustrating as that might sometimes be, it's far better than any alternative.

It shouldn't be easy to put innocent people in prison, because then anyone with an axe to grind could make an allegation and get an enemy punished for it.

So unfortunately, there isn't much you can do to change the system to make it work both ways. All you can do is unfairly ask women to be more blatant and forceful to deny men, but if there's a violent man involved in the situation, that could bring about a whole new set of problems.

All you can hope is that men who consider sexually assaulting women restrain themselves, not because they fear legal punishment, but because they know it's wrong, because the legal system has done what little it could. Men need to get the message and take it from there.