Jenkins goes on trial for drug dealer killings

A stunningly made-over Philander Jenkins arrived in Hennepin County District Court today for the start of his murder trial.

Jenkins, 24, wore stylish black glasses and a well-fitted suit, looking as if he could be working for a law firm rather than facing four first-degree murder charges for the killings of two drug dealers last March.

Gone were the jail-issued orange outfits he had appeared in out of the presence of the jury.

Defense lawyer Jill Waite called the case a "whodunnit."

"It's up to you to figure out what this means," she told the jury.

Her opening statement came after Assistant Hennepin County Attorney Julie Allyn described the shooting in the early morning hours of March 14 as many of the residents slept in a crack house at 29th and Dupont Avs. N.

According to Allyn, Jenkins arrived at the house with two drug-dealing friends, but only he left. Lorenzo Porter, 35, of Champlin, was shot once through the temple. Eugene Curry, 34, of Minneapolis, was shot in the face, chest and back of the head. Both were found in pools of blood. Neither man had any money in his pockets, and Porter's cell phone was missing, Allyn said.

Police traced Jenkins' address from 911 calls for a March 12 shooting in which Jenkins received a leg wound.

When police arrived at his boarding house, they found $400, a "big huge revolver" with blood on it and the missing cell phone. They found Curry's blood on Jenkins' pants, Allyn said, and Jenkins' DNA was on the gun along with a thumbprint.

But Waite said things aren't always what they seem. "Is this really like a poorly worded mystery that the butler did it, or in this case the young black male?" she asked.

She said Jenkins grew up with an alcoholic mother, who turned her life around and moved to Minneapolis, working two jobs and taking her children for support groups in hopes of helping them avoid drugs. Brenda Jenkins was "heartbroken when her son headed down the path of chemical dependency," Waite said. Still, she helped him get a room and picked him up daily to apply for jobs.

While Allyn portrayed the case as a culmination of "diligent, insightful" police work, Waite and co-counsel Jill Clark said they will raise numerous questions about whether someone else in the drug house killed the men.