Law&Crime Sidebar - Witness No-Show Rocks D4vd Tesla Investigation: Report

Episode Date: December 11, 2025

Tension is boiling inside the grand jury investigating Celeste Rivas’ death, as a key female witness now risks arrest for refusing to testify. TMZ reports the deputy D.A. threatened a body-attachment order after the witness failed to appear — and she’s represented by the same attorney as D4vd’s manager, who spent days fielding questions about why he never called police. With prosecutors treating singer D4vd as a suspect in an alleged homicide, Law&Crime's Jesse Weber breaks down what this standoff means for the investigation with former deputy attorney general Mark Weaver.PLEASE SUPPORT THE SHOW:Stop guessing - start making perfect food every time. Use code SIDEBAR for 30% off . https://chefiq.com/discount/SIDEBARHOST:Jesse Weber: https://twitter.com/jessecordweberLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokeVideo Editing - Michael Deininger, Christina O'Shea, Alex Ciccarone, & Jay CruzScript Writing & Producing - Savannah Williamson & Juliana BattagliaGuest Booking - Alyssa Fisher & Diane KayeSocial Media Management - Vanessa BeinSTAY UP-TO-DATE WITH THE LAW&CRIME NETWORK:Watch Law&Crime Network on YouTubeTV: https://bit.ly/3td2e3yWhere To Watch Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3akxLK5Sign Up For Law&Crime's Daily Newsletter: https://bit.ly/LawandCrimeNewsletterRead Fascinating Articles From Law&Crime Network: https://bit.ly/3td2IqoLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Did a witness refuse to testify in the David Celeste Rivas Hernandez case? New reporting suggests that a witness didn't show up to testify in front of a reported grand jury hearing evidence, and the prosecutor is allegedly going to have this person detained and brought into court. Wild new update we need to talk about and how it fits into the original. overall puzzle of this story. Welcome to Sidebar. Presented by Law and Crime. I'm Jesse Weber. Okay, before we go any further into this, got to talk about something. It's the holiday season.

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Okay, we have yet another update in the David Celeste Rivas-Hernandez case that just came out that we want to talk about. It is a continuation from what we discussed yesterday, because yesterday, if you watched our sidebar, we discussed how it was being reported that a grand jury, right, had been impaneled to hear evidence in connection with the death of 14-year-old Celeste Rivas Hernandez, whose dead body, was found in a Tesla that was registered to the romantic homicide singer. This was back in September out in L.A. more specifically, though, TMZ was reporting, and this is what we talked about yesterday, that the president of David's touring company was questioned as part of these grand jury proceedings, that he was questioned by a deputy district attorney in front of this grand jury on Monday, referring to Robert Morgan Roth, who heads up Mogul Vision, that's David's record label, and also Zara Brothers Travel, it's the touring company.

TMZ had reported, we talked about this, that Morgan Roth had allegedly come out of the courtroom, was in the hallway, was allegedly overheard telling his lawyer that the DA, who was questioning him, quote, she was very pushy on why it didn't call police. I said, I feel like I didn't have the responsibility to do that and just wanted to continue with the tour. As we discussed, this raises a lot of questions about if this is true, are we talking about knowledge of a crime? What crime is David involved? We know David was on tour when Celeste's body was found. That tour was ultimately canceled. David has been basically MIA. But now what are we talking about? New update. TMZ is also reporting that there may be some serious

problems in the grand jury proceeding right now, that a witness is refusing to cooperate. Now, in TMZ's report, they mentioned that Beth Silverman, so the deputy Los Angeles district attorney who may be spearheading this case, we don't know for sure, but may. Again, and I listed this out in our previous sidebar, she's a career prosecutor who's worked on major, major murder cases. Well, TMZ reports that Beth Silverman allegedly went into the courtroom hallway and started talking to attorney Evan Jenis. Genis apparently represents Morgan Roth.

And this is where Silverman allegedly told Janice that she is going to petition the judge to issue a body attachment. So apparently a legal mechanism to compel a witness here, an unidentified female, to testify before the grand jury, that this person would be taken into custody and brought into this grand jury hearing. Why? Because reportedly, this witness just didn't show up to testify. Now, as TMZ reports, they don't know who this person is.

They comment that it's interesting. By the way, they say female, so we don't know if we're talking a woman, a minor. We don't know, but female. But TMZ, it's interesting, they're seemingly suggesting that Janus may represent both Morgan Roth and this unidentified female witness. We don't know the apparent connection between the two of them, but obviously this is noteworthy, if true. Now, TMZ is also reporting that Silverman went into a courtroom with Morgan Roth and his lawyer that there was a TMZ reporter that was allegedly told by the judge to leave. And I will also mention that TMZ has done more of a deep dive into Morgan Roth as well. They're now reporting that he was working for and with David day to day as his manager.

By the way, apparently David also has another manager, Josh Marshall. He was the one who apparently, according to private investigator Steve Fisher, and Steve Fisher's looking into this case. that Marshall had signed the lease on the property that David was staying at in the Hollywood Hills, which was reportedly near where the Tesla was found and towed. That property, by the way, was searched by authorities. David reportedly broke the lease, moved this stuff out. But managers, they may have a connection here. All of this reporting, all of these alleged developments come as there is no arrest in this case,

no charges. David has not officially been implicated in any wrongdoing while there is reporting that indicates David is being considered a suspect. LAPD hasn't officially confirmed this. They have acknowledged potential connection to the Celeste investigation nonetheless. And this grand jury, which I mentioned before, we can't even officially confirm it's going on, but if it is, we're also not entirely sure if it's a grand jury that returns an indictment or what was originally reported by outlets like the L.A. Times that this is an investigative grand jury, one that helps in producing and presenting evidence and recommending charges, but not

issuing a formal indictment. That may be left to a future grand jury. Again, we don't know for short. But what we do know is that the LAPD has been very tight-lipped about this and that they successfully petition the court to seal the medical examiner's records on this case, including releasing any information on cause and manner of death of Celeste while this investigation continues. They said in a statement, that order was sought only to ensure detectives from the robbery homicide division learned of important information surrounding her death before the media and the public. The order was not sought to undermine transparency. I want to talk about the latest in this. Let me bring in Mark Weaver, prosecutor, former deputy attorney general. So good to have you on.

Thank you for taking the time. Are you surprised how much we're potentially learning about a grand jury? I thought traditionally we would have no idea if a grand jury was even being impaneled, let alone who would be testifying. Well, when I'm in a grand jury as a prosecutor, I take great care to make sure. that the general public doesn't know what we're doing. But in a busy courthouse, when a prosecutor goes out into a hallway to talk to the lawyer for one of the witnesses, there's going to be people there who overhear. Perhaps she could have been a little more cautious. But remember, the people who testify in front of a grand jury, the witnesses like this tour manager you mentioned, they are not bound by the grand jury secrecy rules the way the grand jurors, the judge, the prosecutor, and the prosecutor

staff are. So some of this could be overheard in the hallway. Some of this could be witnesses who've appeared leaking what happened in the grand jury. Let me just be clear about that. You're saying grand jury witness come out, go on television and say everything they testify to? They can. They're not supposed to. We saw that, you know, as prosecutors, we asked them remain confidential. We don't have a legal ability to do this. We saw this in the case in Georgia. the criminal case against Donald Trump, where we actually had the four women of the grand jury, she shouldn't have been talking because she's a grand juror. But the witnesses who go in front of a grand jury, we don't have a legal mechanism in most states to be able to stop that from happening.

Steve Fisher, the private investigator who I mentioned before we talked about yesterday, he had a long social media post where he basically said he was being compelled to appear in court for contempt hearing because of what he testified to as a witness in a grand jury proceeding. He wouldn't confirm if, of course, if whether or not. not it was regarding Celeste or David, but read between the lines, you can make the argument there was. So if he's listening to this, he probably would love to hear your perspective on this. He supports your perspective on this. He said he testified. His concern was that he, according to him, he was accused of being held in contempt or potentially held in contempt because he spoke

about the case. Now, the law may be different in California than it is where I practice, but typically you cannot bind witnesses from speaking. I'm not a California lawyer. I do know this. When the judge gets involved, that usually means something has gone wrong within the grand jury, either, as you mentioned, potential witnesses talking when they were told not to, or not answering every question, only answering some of the questions.

Let me ask you this. If this reporting is true, what do you make of a potential uncooperative witness? Does that happen? And why does that happen? It's rare. prosecutor part-time since 2001. I've only ever had to use a body attachment once. And by the way, explain what a body attachment is. Yeah, it sounds like a piercing, doesn't it? It's just a legal term that means let's get the person, the body, habeas corpus. The corpus of habeas corpus means

body, produce the body, Latin term, right? And so a body attachment is an order from a court that someone who is unwilling to abide by normal legal process, normal legal process would be a subpoena. You receive something either in the mail or from a process server saying that you need to show up for a proceeding. It could be a grand jury, it could be a deposition, could be a trial subpoena. And when someone refuses to do that, a court can order a body attachment, which is an order to the sheriff deputy or some other court officer to go get that person, keep them in custody until they testify. Most people don't know. that you don't have to be the defendant to go to jail in a criminal case.

You could be a witness who's refusing to show up. And one of the things that I thought about why this might be happening, why would somebody not want to testify, refuse to show up, either it was unintentional, they forgot about it, they slept late, whatever, or if this is so high profile, and it's already being reported that there's names of people who are testifying in front of the grand jury, that person may not want to show up. The high-profile nature of this, the celebrity nature of this,

if that is a legitimate concern, don't they have to walk through the same doors as everybody else? I mean, am I wrong that that could be a possibility? I think you're right. No reasonable judge would issue a body attachment for an absent-minded witness, which any of us could be. Larm clock didn't go off. We forgot.

We had a doctor's appointment. We're sick. This is such a strong use of government power to reach out and take somebody who's not accused of a crime and yank them into custody, that a judge would not do that for an absent-minded witness. A judge would only do that for a recalcitrant witness, someone who is either dodging service, which was the case I had in a child rape case I prosecuted, where I couldn't get the witness to take the service, or someone who got the service and then refused to show up.

It could also be, I mean, look what we're talking about here. We're talking about the disposal of a teenager's body, potentially a homicide investigation. Is the possibility a grand jury witness could be scared? Certainly. There's lots of reasons why someone might be recalcitrant. They could be scared. They could be worried about notoriety and not wanting to be drugging that a story because they're a private person.

They might not want to implicate someone who they love or they're close to. You mentioned earlier that the Deputy District Attorney was speaking to the private lawyer about this case, the private lawyer who represented the tour manager. The fact that that DA, that Deputy DA would speak to that lawyer, I think that's almost a certainty that that lawyer represents the recalcitrant witness, which means likely, now I'm surmising here, likely the recalcitrant witness is within the inner circle of David, the way this tour manager is within the inner circle of David. Are there any mechanisms the court or the DA can put in place to ensure someone's safety,

to ensure that their identity is not revealed? Can they go through a back door? Can a courtroom be changed? I mean, it was being reported at TMZ. tried to get into that courtroom and were kicked out. Is there any ways, creative ways to, I mean, this is not a case that you see every day. And assuming there is really a grand jury impaneled in this investigation, are there mechanisms in place to ensure that the proceeding stay secret that witnesses will not be identified?

Is there anything to do? Yes. I tell witnesses for grand jury, we can keep your information confidential because of the criminal rules, specifically 6E, allows us to. do that. But if this witness gives us information that helps us solve this crime at grand jury, I always have to let the witness know, it's entirely possible we will need to call you at a trial. And you're not allowed to testify under a pseudonym at a trial. We have public trials in America. We have what's called the confrontation clause of the Constitution, which requires that the

defendant be able to confront the accuser in open court. So we have some mechanism to protect people in the grand jury process. But when you take the stand in a trial, you cannot be, you might be able to keep your name separate from the press. That's kind of rare, but I've seen that. You cannot keep your name separate from the defendant against whom you're testifying. That raises a different point. Anybody who testifies in front of the grand jury necessarily would they testify in a trial? I've been told, right, if you testify in front of the grand jury, you're locking in your testimony.

That is what you said. If it should change later on at a trial, you're going to be confronted with it, right? I imagine that's what we're saying. But is it always that the people who testify in a grand jury are the ones who testify at a trial? Or sometimes you might not need to call them at a trial. Most commonly, people who testify in grand juries will testify at the trial. You're right that as prosecutors, we often want somebody to go in front of a grand jury because we do want to lock them into their testimony.

Remember, they're under oath in grand jury. And if they say something later, in the public sense, that's different. There's a process. It's a little complicated by which we can impeach them with prior statements. Certainly the defendant, if they find out about the grand jury by getting a copy of the transcript from the judge, they can also impeach that person. But it is not required that all witnesses called to grand jury be called to trial. As a prosecutor, I get to decide whoever I want to call at trial because I'm the one with the burden of proof. I'm going to be very speculative here, but assuming there is a problem with this witness, is it a symptom of what a prosecution could look

like in this case. And it's so difficult to say because we don't even know who the defendants are. We don't even know what charges will there be, if any. But I do wonder if this will make it a difficult prosecution, high profile case, a lot of eyeballs on it. Would it be a difficult case for Beth Silverman to try assuming for the moment that she's actually the prosecutor who would go forward with the case? And it's so speculative because we don't even have a case yet. We don't even know. That's the problem. When you start with a decomposing body and no witnesses of how that body got there, or at least not at first. It starts out as a very difficult case

because the body might have been in the front trunk of that Tesla for hours or days. You're saying he was there for quite some time. They're saying it was there for a result. Evidence is degrading and finding out who was there when it happened is degrading. Phil Possible, you know, there's ring doorbell cameras, there's security camera, there's people who will talk.

But you're starting out with a tough case when you find a body that's been there a while. Add to that, the scrutiny that comes with a high-profile case And I don't know how much money this David has, but if he has a lot of money, then his lawyers can exert a lot of pressure and do what they can to roll marbles under the feet of the prosecution in a way that someone who doesn't have significant resources simply can't. What do you make of Morgan Roth? Why would they want him to testify? And what do you make of these alleged comments that he made about being grilled by the deputy DA on why didn't contact police or stop the tour? Yeah, I mean, I've been accused of being a little tough. in my examination and grand jury, I suppose, as well as jury. I'm trying to get to the truth.

I've got a burden. I've got to make my burden any way I can legally and ethically. And so I imagine this deputy DA wants to know where was David on certain days when this body could have been put there. Where was he? Allegedly he's on tour, but since we don't know the exact dates, we need more information. Who was he talking to immediately before we think this child died and after? And if you are the manager of somebody, your source of income, or at least, a large source of your income comes from this artist. And if this artist is accused of murder and eventually convicted of murder, your source of income is shut off. This feels extensive. If we're talking about a grand jury potentially that's been impaneled for a while, in your

experience, if that's true, and you have a witness testifying over several days, and let's say certain media reporting is accurate that this has been going on, I don't know, a month, maybe longer. Is that a sign that this is an investigative grand jury, helps with some? subpoenaing, issuing subpoenas of witnesses and production of documents, maybe recommending charges, versus a grand jury whose sole responsibility is to indict someone or several people. Do you think this is an investigative grand jury or a grand jury that can indict? It's unusual. I've been in a lot of grand juries over my years, and it's always the same grand jury that hears the evidence that votes on the indictment. Certainly any grand juror

who wants, who's going to vote on an indictment must have access. to that information. So it's possible that the term of the first grand jury is going to end before they're going to seek indictments. Typically, then you would bring in a detective or somebody else who could summarize the testimony or evidence that was gathered before the original grand jury. But let's recall, grand juries, even in big cities like L.A. are busy. They have lots of cases to look at. And we typically don't get the grand jurors for 40 hours a week for a long period of time because these are everyday citizens who are called down to jury duty, not the regular jury duty we're all accustomed to, but rather grand jury duty. And they

almost always have other cases they have to consider as well. And that can get complicated when they're hearing multiple cases and, you know, they have to consider like, okay, remember what we, you heard last Thursday as there were you heard cases in between. But you remember, you don't need a unanimous decision there. You just need a majority to return back an indictment. Okay. What does this say about the timeline then? Everybody's listening to this and everybody's wondering, is someone going to get arrested? Is someone going to get charged? I know it's really difficult based on such limited information. Do you have an idea about the timeline, what we might be looking at? Well, we don't have a statute of limitations problem for murder. That's something prosecutor is always thinking about statute of limitations because we can't bring a case if the statute is run. So that's not a problem on a murder case. And you do want to go as quickly as you can because witnesses begin forgetting. Witnesses begin moving. Maybe they move to another state.

They're less available, whatever. And so you want to move quickly, but not so quickly that you miss something or create a procedural defect. We saw this with the Alec Baldwin prosecution and the Rust shooting in New Mexico. He didn't win that case because he wasn't guilty. He won that case because of an alleged procedural defect in the way the special prosecutors handled that. So prosecutors have to think about the procedure. They have to think about the due process rights. of the people involved.

And they have to think about acquiring evidence before it degrades or witnesses forget or leave the jurisdiction. This has been a kind of a tough job for me because I don't have a lot of information about this case. We're basing it a lot on reporting and sources tell X, Y, and Z. I wonder the fact that LAPD is so tight-lipped on this and that they got the court to agree to a petition to seal the M.E. records. Is that unusual, in your opinion? Judges don't mind sealing things if you can give

them the basis for doing it, either because they're worried about pretrial publicists in affecting the jury pool in a way that might taint their outcome, or because they think that somehow this information is so shocking or so invasive of someone's privacy that it ought to be sealed. It's the former example I gave you that's the much more common reason. Only occasionally will you see a privacy interest being asserted in a reason for a seal? feeling. All right. Let's see what happens next. Keeping a very, very careful eye out in L.A. Mark Weaver, thank you so much for taking the time, sir. Appreciate it. Thank you, Jesse. And that's all we have for you right now here on Sidebar, everybody.

Thank you so much for joining us. And as always, please subscribe on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you should get your podcast. You can follow me on X or Instagram. I'm Jesse Weber. I'll speak to you next time. You can binge all episodes of this law and crime series ad free right now on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify.