A makeshift memorial for actor Matthew Perry in New York City in October, 2023.Mike Segar/Reuters
A U.S. federal judge on Wednesday handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison to a woman who pleaded guilty to selling Friends star Matthew Perry the ketamine that killed him in 2023.
“You’re going to have to show some epic resilience,” Justice Sherilyn Peace Garnett said to Jasveen Sangha, echoing the defendant’s words earlier in the hearing about her self-improvement.
Citing the unique role she admitted to in Mr. Perry’s death and her broader drug-dealing business, the judge gave the 42-year-old a sentence that will almost certainly be more than all four of her co-defendants combined.
Two more will be sentenced later this month. But Wednesday’s hearing in a Los Angeles courtroom was in many ways the pinnacle of the 2½-year investigation and prosecution that followed the overdose death of the 54-year-old actor, whose role as Chandler Bing on NBC’s Friends in the 1990s and 2000s made him one of the biggest television stars of the era.
Keith Morrison, Perry’s stepfather and correspondent for NBC’s Dateline, told the judge that he and Mr. Perry’s mother, Suzanne, feel a “daily, grinding sadness and sorrow.”
“There was a spark to that man I have never seen anywhere else,” Mr. Morrison said in his familiar and dramatic voice. “He should have had another act. Two more acts.”
Doctor who sold ketamine to actor Matthew Perry sentenced to 30 months in prison
Ms. Sangha stood at the podium Wednesday just before she was sentenced and told the judge she wears her shame “like a jacket.”
“These were not mistakes. They were horrible decisions,” Ms. Sangha said, which “shattered people’s lives and the lives of their family and friends.”
Prosecutors cast her in court filings as a “Ketamine Queen” who had an elaborate drug operation catering to high-end clients to give herself a jet-setting lifestyle.
Fifteen years was the exact sentence prosecutors had asked for. Ms. Sangha’s attorneys argued the time she has spent in jail since her August, 2024, indictment should be sufficient. They pointed to her lack of prior arrests and exemplary behaviour as an inmate, as well as the unlikelihood she would return to a life of drug dealing.
Mr. Perry was found dead in the hot tub at his Los Angeles home. The medical examiner ruled that ketamine, typically used as a surgical anesthetic, was the primary cause of death. Drowning was cited as a secondary cause, with coronary artery disease and buprenorphine also cited as factors.
Mark Geragos, Ms. Sangha’s attorney, said “pernicious” addiction was truly responsible for Mr. Perry’s death, not his client.
“There was nobody who was going to stop Mr. Perry from doing what he was going to do,” Mr. Geragos said.
A drug dealer dubbed the 'Ketamine Queen' was sentenced on Wednesday to 15 years in prison in connection with the fatal overdose of 'Friends' star Matthew Perry, including her role in supplying the dose of the powerful anesthetic that killed the actor.
Reuters
In September, Ms. Sangha became the last of five co-defendants to plead guilty, admitting to one count of using her home for drug distribution, three counts of distribution of ketamine, and one count of distribution of ketamine resulting in death.
Mr. Geragos denounced the prosecution’s use of the moniker “Ketamine Queen,” blaming it on E. Martin Estrada, the U.S. attorney when the case was filed.
“That was not her name, that was his very clever name to draw media attention this case,” he said.
Mr. Perry had been using the drug through his regular doctor as a legal off-label treatment for depression. But he sought more than the doctor would give him. That at first led him to Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who admitted to illegally selling Mr. Perry ketamine and was sentenced to 2½ years in prison. And, days before his death, it led Mr. Perry to Ms. Sangha, and a US$6,000 cash buy that included the lethal dose.
Another doctor, who admitted to providing Dr. Plasencia the ketamine he sold to Mr. Perry, was sentenced to eight months of home detention. Mr. Perry’s assistant and his friend, who admitted acting as the actor’s middlemen, are awaiting sentencing.
The judge said she was trying to carefully calibrate the sentences for the five defendants. She expressed concern about the balance during the hearing, asking lawyers why Ms. Sangha deserved so much more time than Dr. Plasencia or Mr. Perry’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, who obtained and injected the drugs at Mr. Perry’s request and injected them into him.
Mr. Geragos seized on this and said the disparity was outrageous.
“The person who supplies the ammunition, they’re more culpable than the person who pulls the trigger?” he asked.
But before sentencing, Justice Garnett said the size of Ms. Sangha’s drug business, the years she spent dealing and her long list of clients clearly made her more culpable. And she said she believed Ms. Sangha’s criminal history – she has none – was under-represented.
The judge also cited Ms. Sangha’s continued dealing after learning through a text message from his sister that one of her customers, 33-year-old Cody McLaury, had died in 2019.
The sister, Kimberly McLaury, spoke in court.
“Had you stopped selling ketamine when I texted you, we wouldn’t be here today,” she said.
Mr. Perry’s stepmother Debbie Perry told Ms. Sangha she had caused pain for “hundreds, maybe thousands” of people.
The judge commended Ms. Sangha for the “countless” letters of support she got from family and friends touting her loving decency. Many of them were there in court, sitting on the opposite side from Mr. Perry’s family.
“There’s no joy in this process,” Justice Garnett told the victim’s family members. “Maybe at the end of the day you will feel a sense of justice.”