Prosecutors are hoping for a groundbreaking conviction as a man’s trial begins in the alleged rape of a Green Mountain Falls woman in 2001.

Daniel Hayes, 50, is charged with rape and burglary and could face 24 years in prison if convicted of both counts. He was serving a 21-year prison sentence in Kentucky on a rape conviction when El Paso County sheriff’s investigators matched his DNA to evidence found on Claudia Lambert’s sheets. He was arrested last year.

It’s the first time in the 4th Judicial District, which covers El Paso and Teller counties, that someone was arrested on a warrant based solely on DNA. Usually, warrants are filed in the suspect’s name.

The Gazette normally does not name victims of sexual assault, but Lambert said she wanted to be identified.

“It’s a woman’s worst nightmare,” said Chief Deputy District Attorney Diana May during

opening statements Tuesday, describing how a masked man burst into the home of Lambert, then 56, blindfolded her and raped her for hours.

May slammed her hand on a desk in front of jurors to simulate what a door being kicked in might have sounded like to the sleeping Lambert.

“She screams and there’s a large, husky male in a ski mask,” May said. “She curled into the fetal position and tells him, ‘Don’t hurt me.’”

May acknowledged “strange” aspects to the case, namely that Lambert said she experienced multiple orgasms. A therapist will testify that while that seems unusual, it’s not for some victims, May said.

Deputy Public Defender Cindy Jones said her client is innocent. The sex, she said, was consensual, and Lambert hardly acted like a rape victim.

Lambert called her friend instead of police after the incident, Jones said. She didn’t try to call 911 during the alleged attacks, and she didn’t try to flee the house, Jones said.

“All the (DNA) science in the world is not going to resolve the central issue — if the sex was consensual,” Jones said. “There was no force, no weapons — he just tied a slip around her head.”

Jones and Deputy Public Defender Jeffrey Schwartz contended only consensual sex would yield an orgasm for a woman.

They did not contend Lambert and Hayes knew each other before that night.

May, the prosecutor, said Lambert was in “survival mode,” and she was obeying orders so she wouldn’t get hurt.

“She didn’t know if this person had a weapon,” May said. “She never said ‘no.’ She never said ‘I don’t want to have sex.’ . . . She was trying to keep things level and calm.”

The trial is expected to last to the end of next week.

Hayes is being held without bond at the El Paso County Criminal Justice Center.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0110 or dennis.huspeni@gazette.com