Matthew Perry's doctor Salvador Placencia has been sentenced to 30 months in federal prison over his death

The late Friends actor died from accidental drowning caused by the acute effects of ketamine use in October 2023, aged 54, and Dr. Placencia was one of five people convicted of crimes relating to his passing. On Wednesday (03.12.25), he became the first person sentenced in his death, while he has also been ordered to pay a $5,600 (£4,195) fine. Over the summer, he pleaded guilty to four counts of distributing ketamine, which carries a maximum of 40 years in prison, while prosecutors had called for three years. Before his sentence was read in a Los Angeles federal court, he apologised to Perry's family. He said: "I failed myself. There is no excuse. I can't undo what's been done. I know that. I should have protected him, as his mother said. I'm just so sorry." In court, the actor's mother Suzanne Morrison and other family members spoke before Plasencia as sentenced. She referenced texts in court records where the doctor called her late son a "moron" and speculated how much he would pay for the drugs. Addressing him directly, she said: "There was nothing moronic about that man." She noted that he took an oath to protect people, which should have included her son. Plasencia revealed he has a two-year-old son who he wants to "raise" properly, and he has wondered how he will explain everything to him. He said: "I want to raise him right." Jasveen Sangha, a woman described by prosecutors as the "Ketamine Queen" of North Hollywood, is due to be sentenced on 10 December, while Matthew's former assistant Kenneth Iwamasa will hear his fate on 14 January. In addition, another doctor, Dr. Mark Chavez, will be sentenced on 17 December, and Erik Fleming - a local man who acted as a go-between for Sangha in her ketamine sales to Matthew - will be sentenced on 7 January. Ahead of the medic's sentencing on Wednesday, Matthew's parents submitted victim impact letters to the court in which they discussed their grief over the loss of their son and their anger towards those who played a part in his death. According to Rolling Stone, a letter from the 17 Again actor's mother and stepfather, Suzanne and Keith Morrison, read: "How do you measure grief? Can you possibly provide any rational accounting? The bottom falling out? Yes, that. "Here was a life so entwined with ours and held aloft sometimes with duct tape and bailing wire, with anything that might keep that big terrible thing from killing our first-born son, and our hearts with him. "And then those greedy jackals come out of the dark, and all the effort is for naught; it all crashes down."