Matthew Perry’s assistant sentenced to 41-month prison term

The man who served as Matthew Perry’s personal assistant — and who prosecutors said injected the actor with the ketamine dose that proved fatal — was sentenced Wednesday to 41 months in federal prison, marking the end of the criminal case against five people who admitted roles in the Friends star’s death.

U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Garnett handed down the sentence to Kenneth Iwamasa, who discovered Perry unresponsive, floating face down in a hot tub at the actor’s Los Angeles home in October 2023. Prosecutors said Iwamasa gave Perry ketamine at Perry’s request, then left the house to run errands. By the time he returned, Perry was dead.

A subsequent autopsy found that Perry died from the “acute effects of ketamine,” which, together with other contributing factors, caused him to lose consciousness and drown.

Ketamine, a fast-acting but powerful anaesthetic with hallucinogenic effects, is legally used in some cases to treat depression and other psychological disorders. In recent years, however, it has also become widely known as an illicit party drug.

As part of his agreement, Iwamasa gave investigators important evidence against the other defendants.

Federal prosecutors had sought a sentence of at least 41 months for Iwamasa, who first met Perry in ‌1992 and had worked as his live-in assistant since 2022. In court filings submitted before sentencing, they described him as Perry’s “enabler and drug supplier.”

According to prosecutors, Iwamasa injected Perry with ketamine repeatedly throughout October 2023 and on at least two occasions found him unconscious, yet continued administering the drug. They also said he once watched Perry “freeze” and become unable to speak after a doctor injected him with ketamine.

Before his death at 54, Perry had spoken publicly about decades of substance abuse that ran alongside the years when he became famous as Chandler Bing, the sharp-tongued but lovable character on the 1990s NBC hit Friends.

Earlier in the case, two doctors, a drug dealer and an intermediary who helped secure ketamine were also sentenced. Jasveen Sangha, the dealer known as the “Ketamine Queen,” received the harshest punishment: 15 years in prison.

Source: Reuters