“Why”
Written for her father as a teenager and later produced in the studio—music as memory, grief, and testimony.
01 / THE STORY
“When the system says denied, we create our own justice and peace.”
A story buried
for more than
three decades.
On November 6, 1993, Gary Jerome Weems died after an encounter with police in Lowell, Massachusetts. His eight-year-old daughter was left with questions that would follow her into adulthood.
Justice Denied is a 72-minute documentary following Jestina's fight for answers: exhumation, DNA testing, a second autopsy, and the right to bury her father with dignity—not in an unmarked pauper's grave.
This is about what happens when official records conflict, institutions close ranks, and a daughter refuses to let silence become the final word. It is also about how she turned childhood grief into authorship, music, theater, film, and an enduring act of remembrance.