A doctor who pleaded guilty to selling ketamine to Matthew Perry in the weeks before the Friends star’s overdose death was sentenced to 2½ years in prison on Thursday.
Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett handed down the sentence plus two years of probation to 44-year-old Dr Salvador Plasencia in a federal courtroom in Los Angeles.
The judge emphasised that Plasencia didn’t provide the ketamine that killed Perry, but told him, “You and others helped Mr Perry on the road to such an ending by continuing to feed his ketamine addiction”.
“You exploited Mr Perry’s addiction for your own profit,” she said.
Plasencia was led from the courtroom in handcuffs as his mother cried loudly in the audience. He might have arranged a date to surrender, but his lawyers said he was prepared to do it today.
Perry’s mother, stepmother and two half-sisters gave tearful victim impact statements before the sentencing.
“My brother’s death turned my world upside down,” sister Madeline Morrison said, crying. “It punched a crater in my life. His absence is everywhere.”
She talked about the broad effect of his loss.
“The world mourns my brother. He was everyone’s favourite friend,” Morrison said, adding “celebrities are not plastic dolls that you can take advantage of. They’re people. They’re human beings with families.”
Plasencia was the first to be sentenced of the five defendants who have pleaded guilty in connection with Perry’s death at age 54 in 2023.
The doctor admitted to taking advantage of Perry, knowing he was a struggling addict. Plasencia texted another doctor that Perry was a “moron” who could be exploited for money, according to court filings.
Prosecutors had asked for three years in prison, while the defence sought just a day in prison plus probation.
Perry’s mother talked about the things he overcame in life and the strength he showed.
“I used to think he couldn’t die,” Suzanne Perry said as her husband, Dateline journalist Keith Morrison, stood at the podium with her.
“You called him a ‘moron,'” she said, addressing Plasencia. “There is nothing moronic about that man. He was even a successful drug addict.”
She spoke eloquently and apologised for rambling before getting tearful at the end, saying, “this was a bad thing you did!”
Plasencia also spoke before the sentencing, breaking into tears as he imagined the day he would have to tell his now two-year-old son “about the time I didn’t protect another mother’s son. It hurts me so much. I can’t believe I’m here.”
He apologised directly to Perry’s family. “I should have protected him,” he said.
Perry had been taking the surgical anaesthetic ketamine legally as a treatment for depression. But when his regular doctor wouldn’t provide it in the amounts he wanted, he turned to Plasencia, who admitted to illegally selling to Perry and knowing he was a struggling addict.
Plasencia’s lawyers tried to give a sympathetic portrait of him as a man who rose out of poverty to become a doctor beloved by his patients.
His mother stood to speak after Perry’s mother had spoken, but the judge told her it wasn’t appropriate for this hearing.
Plasencia pleaded guilty in July to four counts of distribution of ketamine. Prosecutors agreed to drop five different counts. He did not plead to causing Perry’s death, and the amount he distributed was relatively small given that he sold only to Perry.
She said she largely agreed with a probation report suggesting the appropriate sentence was between eight and 14 months, but she went well beyond that.
“I think the judge was very well-reasoned,” Keith Morrison told reporters.
Garnett said at the start of the hearing that family impact statements may not be appropriate because legally, “there is no identifiable victim in this case. The victim is the public.”
But Perry’s lawyers said they didn’t object to family members speaking.
The defence sought to cast Plasencia as a doctor treating a patient who was overcome by recklessness and greed.
“It was a perfect storm of bad decision-making, everybody agrees,” attorney Karen Goldstein said, adding “absolutely his judgment was clouded by money.”
Prosecutors said he was never acting as a doctor.
“He wasn’t a negligent or reckless medical provider,” Assistant US Attorney Ian Yanniello said. “He was a drug dealer in a white coat.”
Garnett generally agreed, pushing back against the defence argument that Perry was Plasencia’s patient, and that the doctor had diagnosed him in a phone call they had before the sales began.
“Mr Plasencia kept pushing it,” the judge said. “He literally was offering to sell ketamine.”
When another defence attorney asked, “Is your honour confused about how this all went down?” Garnett replied, sternly, “No I’m not.”
The other four defendants who reached deals to plead guilty will be sentenced at their own hearings in the coming months. Garnett said she would seek to make sure all the sentences made sense in relation to one another.
Perry struggled with addiction for years, dating back to his time on Friends, when he became one of the biggest stars of his generation as Chandler Bing. He starred alongside Jennifer Aniston, Courteney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer for 10 seasons from 1994 to 2004 on NBC’s megahit.
