By ANDREW DALTON AP Entertainment Writer
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Matthew Perry’s live-in personal assistant, who had a central role in the “Friends” star’s descent into ketamine addiction and injected him with the fatal dose of the drug, was sentenced Wednesday to three years and five months in prison.
Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett handed down the sentence to 60-year-old Kenneth Iwamasa in federal court in Los Angeles. He was also sentenced to two years of probation and a $10,000 fine.
It was the fifth and final sentencing in the 2 1/2-year investigation and prosecution that followed Perry’s death at age 54 on Oct. 28, 2023.
“You were privy to his struggle with addiction,” Garnett said before handing down the sentence. “Your conduct was reckless, not just on the day of his death but in the days leading up to his death.”
The sentence was exactly what prosecutors had sought, though Garnett disagreed on some of the details. She found that Iwamasa did not abuse a position of trust, which could’ve brought more prison time.
She also told Iwamasa, “there is no hard evidence that you acted with malicious intent, though some would disagree.”
Iwamasa was at Perry’s side through the final days of his life, acting as the actor’s enabler, drug messenger and de facto doctor. He was the last person to see Perry alive, and he was the one who found him dead in his Jacuzzi.
Iwamasa stood at the court’s podium before the sentencing and made the unusual move of looking right at Perry’s family and friends as he spoke into the microphone.
“I’m horribly, horribly sorry, and I offer my condolences to you,” he said. “I’m just so sorry to have done these illegal acts that I will forever regret. I will take that to my grave.”
Iwamasa wore a charcoal-gray suit, with his long white hair combed back. He had no visible reaction to the sentence. His father and brother sat in the audience with other supporters.
Iwamasa was the first person to reach a deal with prosecutors, pleading guilty in August of 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine resulting in death, and became their most important witness.
Iwamasa’s lawyer, Alan Eisner, argued for a six-month prison term with six months of home confinement, emphasizing he was always acting at the direction of a boss with much more power than he had.
“His loyalty to Mr. Perry was paramount,” Eisner told the judge. “He worshipped Mr. Perry, he looked up to Mr. Perry. All he did was please and accommodate Mr. Perry.”
When Eisner said Iwamasa was unable to act differently than he did, the judge cut him off and said: “Unwilling. Not unable. He could have said no.”
Perry’s mother and sisters made it clear in letters to the judge that there is no one they blame for his death more than Iwamasa — a longtime friend they thought would help the actor maintain sobriety but instead indulged the worst impulses of a lifelong addict.
Perry’s stepfather, longtime “Dateline” journalist Keith Morrison, spoke for his loved ones at the sentencing.
“We really felt that he was part of the family,” Morrison said. “We trusted him implicitly.”
Morrison acknowledged the power imbalance, but said Iwamasa still had a choice.
“You did the injections. You could have made the phone call,” he said. “But you didn’t. Because you were living a dandy life.” He added, “You were in control of one of the most famous people in the world.”
Lisa Ferguson, Perry’s business manager for most of his career and now his estate executor, painted a darker picture, saying Iwamasa deliberately drove out everyone else surrounding Perry, including sober-living companions and medical workers, to shore up his own power and influence. She angrily said he used Perry’s addiction to his own advantage.
“What you are is the monster that killed him,” she said. She said he had shown “not a shred of guilt or remorse” since Perry’s death, and that he ought to “rot in prison.”
“Matthew deserved to live,” she said. “You don’t.”
Iwamasa looked right at Morrison and Ferguson throughout their remarks from his nearby seat.
Perry had hired Iwamasa in 2022, and he was paying him $150,000 a year to live at his Los Angeles home and act as his assistant.
The actor had been taking the surgical anesthetic ketamine legally for depression, an increasingly common off-label use. But he wanted more than his doctor would give him.
According to Iwamasa’s plea agreement, he bought off-the-books ketamine from another doctor, Salvador Plasencia, who taught him how to inject it. Plasencia was sentenced to 2 1/2 years in prison in July.
Iwamasa also began buying ketamine from Perry acquaintance Erik Fleming, who was getting it from a street dealer. Fleming was sentenced to two years in prison two weeks ago.
The dealer, Jasveen Sangha, dubbed “The Ketamine Queen,” was sentenced to 15 years on April 8.
The criminal investigation began not long after Iwamasa returned from running errands to find Perry dead.
The LA County Medical Examiner found that ketamine was the primary cause of death. Drowning was a secondary cause.
At first, Iwamasa had lied to police, omitting ketamine from the list of medications Perry was using, and saying nothing about his injections. But after investigators served a search warrant in January of 2024, he began coming clean.
Perry became one of the biggest stars of his generation along with Courteney Cox, Jennifer Aniston, Matt LeBlanc, David Schwimmer and Lisa Kudrow on “Friends,” NBC’s megahit sitcom that ran from 1994 to 2004.