A Lawrence man claims he is being unfairly charged with burglarizing women’s apartments, but fingerprints place him at one of the crime scenes, according to testimony Monday.

Since spring 2002, Brian K. Charles, 20, has been charged in connection with at least six burglaries or attempted burglaries near Clinton Parkway and Kasold Drive — and charges related to two of the incidents have been dismissed for lack of evidence. Charles insists he’s innocent and that police have been harassing him because he’s black.

“I live on a nice side of town, so they think, ‘Oh, it has to be him,'” Charles said in court recently.

But at a preliminary hearing Monday, Lawrence Police Department crime-scene investigator Dan Ward testified that he matched Charles’ fingerprints with prints found Nov. 3 on a window of an apartment in the 3800 block of Clinton Parkway. A 21-year-old Kansas University student who lives there testified previously that early that morning, she woke to see a stranger standing in her bedroom doorway.

She later picked Charles from a lineup.

Asked how certain he was the fingerprints found at the home came from Charles, Ward said “100 percent.”

Defense attorney J.C. Gilroy questioned why the officer who took the fingerprints from the crime scene didn’t seal a plastic evidence bag before turning it over to Ward. Gilroy said it was possible the evidence was tainted, but District Court Judge Jack Murphy told him that issue should be settled in a motion to suppress — not a preliminary hearing.

At the end of the hearing, Murphy found probable cause to believe Charles committed the burglary and ordered him to stand trial. He’ll be arraigned Jan. 5.

Murphy put off ruling whether Charles must stand trial for another burglary that happened about a half-hour earlier the same night at the same apartment complex. In that instance, a woman told police a man groped her after she awoke to find him in her bed.

Charles also faces three pending charges — sexual battery, burglary and attempted burglary — stemming from two incidents in spring 2002 in the same neighborhood.

A series of similar early-morning burglaries happened this summer — most of them near the Kansas University campus. No one has been charged in those incidents.

Charles remains in the Douglas County Jail with bond set at $50,000.