The doctor who supplied ketamine to the actor of the popular series “Friends” Matthew Perry in the months before his fatal overdose was sentenced to 30 months in prison this Wednesday (12/03/2025) in a court in Los Angeles, United States.
Salvador Plasencia, 44, one of five charged in Perry’s death in October 2023, had pleaded guilty in June to four counts of distributing ketamine.
The doctor, known as Dr. P., appeared before a federal judge in downtown Los Angeles and, according to the Los Angeles Times, turned himself in immediately after the hearing to begin serving his sentence, which includes two years of probation and a $5,600 fine.
Plasencia pleaded guilty on July 23 to four counts of distributing ketamine and surrendered his California medical license in September 2025.
On October 28, 2023, Perry was found unconscious in a hot tub in his Los Angeles home at the age of 54, and the autopsy report revealed that he died from the acute effects of ketamine.
All five defendants accepted plea deals
The US Department of Justice accused five people of belonging to an underground criminal network responsible for distributing large quantities of ketamine, a substance that was found in the performer’s body at the time of his death, and all five accepted plea deals.
Prosecutors stated in a sentencing memorandum, cited by the same publication, that the doctor’s “serious breaches of trust and abandonment of his oath to ‘do no harm’ undoubtedly contributed to the harm suffered by Mr. Perry,” for which they requested a minimum sentence of three years.
For its part, the defense asked that he be sentenced to three years of supervised probation, alleging that the doctor had already lost his license, his clinic and his professional career.
The actor’s mother points to the doctor as “one of the most guilty”
In a victim impact statement filed in federal court this week, Perry’s mother and stepfather, Suzanne and Keith Morrison, wrote that they believed Plasencia was “one of the most culpable of all.”
“Matthew’s recovery depended on you saying NO,” wrote Suzanne Perry and Keith Morrison, according to reporters in court.
«Your reasons? We don’t imagine them. “A doctor who dedicates his life to helping others?” they said.
According to Plasencia’s plea agreement, he distributed 20 vials of ketamine, ketamine pills and syringes to Perry and the actor’s assistant, Kenneth Iwamasa, another of the culprits in the case, in the months of September and October 2023.
The interpreter, celebrated for his character Chandler Bing, had spoken publicly about his struggle with addictions in his memoir ‘Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing: A Memoir’ (2022).
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