By Steve Gorman and Lisa Richwine, Reuters
California physician Mark Chavez leaves federal court in Los Angeles on October 2, 2024. Photo: AFP / Patrick T Fallon
A second California doctor was sentenced on Tuesday (US time) to eight months of home detention for illegally supplying Friends star Matthew Perry with ketamine, the powerful sedative that caused the actor's fatal drug overdose in a hot tub in 2023.
Dr Mark Chavez, 55, a onetime San Diego-based physician, pleaded guilty in federal court in October to a single felony count of conspiracy to distribute the prescription anaesthetic and surrendered his medical licence in November.
Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett also sentenced Chavez to 300 hours of community service. As part of his plea agreement, Chavez admitted to selling ketamine to another physician Dr Salvador Plasencia, 44, who in turn supplied the drug to Perry, though not the dose that ultimately killed the performer.
Plasencia, who pleaded guilty to four counts of unlawful drug distribution, was sentenced earlier this month to two and a half years behind bars.
He and Chavez were the first two of five people convicted in connection with Perry's ketamine-induced death to be sent off to prison.
The three others scheduled to be sentenced in the coming weeks - Jasveen Sangha, 42, a drug dealer known as the "Ketamine Queen;" a go-between dealer Erik Fleming, 56; and Perry's former personal assistant, Iwamasa, 60.
Friends actor Matthew Perry Photo: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/NurPhoto/AFP
Sangha admitted to supplying the ketamine dose that killed Perry, and Iwamasa acknowledged injecting Perry with it. It was Iwamasa who later found Perry, aged 54, face down and lifeless, in the jacuzzi of his Los Angeles home on 28 October, 2023.
An autopsy report concluded the actor died from the acute effects of ketamine, which combined with other factors in causing him to lose consciousness and drown.
Perry had publicly acknowledged decades of substance abuse, including the years he starred as Chandler Bing on the hit 1990s NBC television series Friends.
According to federal law enforcement officials, Perry had been receiving ketamine infusions for treatment of depression and anxiety at a clinic where he became addicted to the drug.
When doctors there refused to increase his dosage, he turned to unscrupulous providers elsewhere willing to exploit Perry's drug dependency as a way to make quick money, authorities said.
Ketamine is a short-acting anaesthetic with hallucinogenic properties that is sometimes prescribed to treat depression and other psychiatric disorders. It also has seen widespread abuse as an illicit party drug.
-Reuters
