The new year will bring a degree of closure to the most surreal political story of 2006. On Wednesday, Clark County District Attorney David Roger announced Gov.-elect Jim Gibbons wouldn't face criminal prosecution in connection with a woman's allegation that he assaulted her outside a valley restaurant on Oct. 13.

The encounter overwhelmed coverage of policy issues leading up to the Nov. 7 gubernatorial election. Amid an already-polarized campaign, the story further inflamed Nevada's partisan divide. Rep. Gibbons' detractors revelled in the controversy while his supporters mostly ignored it. In the end, the scandal failed to swing the election as Rep. Gibbons, the front-running Republican, went on to defeat state Senate Minority Leader Dina Titus, the Democratic nominee, by 4 percentage points.

And yet, for a case that consumed untold pages of newsprint and occupied a team of busy investigators for weeks, Mr. Roger's decision was easy -- and correct.

Absent the election intrigue and the involvement of a prominent politician, police wouldn't have spent more than a couple of hours investigating this incident. There were no eyewitnesses to Chrissy Mazzeo's claim that Rep. Gibbons grabbed her in a parking garage and demanded sex. There was no physical evidence to support the allegation. In a case of he-said-she-said (Rep. Gibbons maintained his innocence throughout the inquiry), criminal prosecution is unwarranted, not to mention impossible.

"We felt we did not have a provable case," Mr. Roger said.

Ms. Mazzeo, a 32-year-old cocktail waitress, expressed unhappiness with the decision. "The only thing I can say is our system sucks," she said.

No, the system worked exactly as it should have here. And unless new, credible evidence emerges in this case, its resolution is just.