A defense attorney for a man on trial for the 1997 rape of a Kansas University student twice asked the judge to declare a mistrial on Tuesday in Douglas County District Court.

The attorney, Jessica Travis, claimed that her client’s constitutional rights to a fair trial had been violated.

The first request came Tuesday morning after an in-court identification of the defendant by the victim in the case.

During opening statements Monday, Travis had told jurors that the victim, who was 20 at the time, had never been able to identify the man who kidnapped her near Naismith Hall on May 11, 1997, and raped her in a secluded area near Lawrence High School. Travis said she had prepared her defense based on that fact.

But during testimony Tuesday, the victim identified the 36-year-old defendant as the rapist.

“It’s hard to forget something like that. It’s definitely, definitely him,” she said from the witness stand, seated just feet from the defendant.

She testified that at times the man who attacked her was wearing gloves and a nylon stocking covering his face.

“He said, ‘Don’t look at my face, don’t look at me, or I’ll shoot you,'” the woman said.

The defense accused the prosecution of not disclosing the evidence of the woman’s identification of the suspect.

The victim said she hadn’t identified him before because she was never asked. She told prosecutor Amy McGowan that when she walked into the courtroom to testify during a preliminary hearing in the case in January 2008, she had no doubt the defendant was the man who raped her.

McGowan told the judge that she had just discovered the evidence of the identification Monday afternoon.

Travis said the evidence affects her client’s right to a fair trial.

“I’ve automatically lost credibility with the jury,” Travis argued.

The second request for a mistrial came immediately following testimony by Dr. Carol Moddrell, the chief of pathology at Lawrence Memorial Hospital.

Moddrell testified about slides she examined containing evidence collected during the sexual-assault examination of the victim at LMH.

But Travis argued that she was never made aware that those slides existed.

“They’ve (the prosecution) been playing hide the ball,” Travis told the judge. “I think it warrants a mistrial.”

Judge Peggy Kittel took the issue under advisement and said she would issue a ruling at 9 a.m. today.

Among other witnesses who took the stand Tuesday: the victim’s boyfriend at the time, who called 911, reporting the possible abduction; Ryan Halsted, one of the first Lawrence police officers on the scene; and Linda Warren, a sexual-assault nurse examiner from Lawrence Memorial Hospital who collected the sexual-assault evidence kit in the case.

The defendant, a longtime Lawrence resident, is on trial for one count of rape. Police arrested him 10 years after the crime was committed when there was a “hit” on one of the man’s fingerprints that had been entered in the FBI’s Automated Fingerprint Identification System, or AFIS.

The Journal-World generally does not identify the suspect in a sex crime unless there is a conviction.