Physical Address
304 North Cardinal St.
Dorchester Center, MA 02124
Kenneth Iwamasa, Matthew Perry’s longtime assistant who injected the fatal ketamine dose, is set to be sentenced Wednesday as the final defendant in the case.
Kenneth Iwamasa, the 60-year-old personal assistant who lived with Matthew Perry and injected the ketamine doses that killed him in October 2023, is scheduled to be sentenced Wednesday in federal court in Los Angeles, ending the two-and-a-half-year prosecution that followed the Friends star’s death.
Prosecutors are recommending three years and five months in prison. Iwamasa’s cooperation as the case’s central witness against the four other defendants has earned him a request below the full guidelines, though his sentence will still exceed all of his co-defendants’ but one.
The hearing is in the federal courtroom of Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett, who has handled all five sentencings in the case. US News’ AP-syndicated preview of the sentencing and the family victim statements notes that members of Perry’s family are expected to address the court.
Perry’s mother, Suzanne Morrison, wrote in a letter to the judge that no one bears more responsibility for her son’s death than Iwamasa. “Matthew trusted Kenny. We trusted Kenny,” she wrote. “We trusted a man without a conscience, and my son paid the price.”
The mechanics of Perry’s death are by now well-documented. Iwamasa, hired in 2022 at $150,000 a year, lived at the actor’s Los Angeles home. In the final week of Perry’s life, he was administering ketamine injections six to eight times a day.
On October 23, 2023, he gave Perry a large dose, left to run errands, and returned to find the 54-year-old dead in the Jacuzzi. The official cause of death was the acute effects of ketamine, with drowning as a secondary cause. Wikipedia’s biographical record of Perry’s life, addictions, and final years includes the medical examiner’s findings and a timeline of his recovery advocacy.
Iwamasa initially misled investigators. He omitted ketamine from the list of Perry’s medications when first questioned and said nothing about the injections. After a January 2024 search warrant, he began cooperating, eventually becoming the prosecution’s most important witness.
The four prior sentencings have set Iwamasa’s context. Salvador Plasencia, the California physician who supplied the ketamine and taught Iwamasa how to inject, was sentenced to 30 months in December 2025. Mark Chavez, the doctor who obtained the ketamine fraudulently and sold it to Plasencia, received eight months of home detention.
Erik Fleming, the drug-addiction counselor who acted as middleman between dealer and assistant, got two years on May 13. The Guardian’s coverage of Fleming’s sentencing and his expression of remorse in court captured the prior week’s most direct courtroom moment from a defendant.
Jasveen Sangha, the dealer prosecutors called the Ketamine Queen, received the longest sentence: 15 years on April 8. Federal authorities found dozens of ketamine vials and thousands of other pills during a 2024 raid at her North Hollywood home, which they described as a drug-selling emporium.
Iwamasa’s defense has framed him as compromised. His lawyers argued in court filings that he was an employee doing his employer’s bidding with a particular vulnerability in the relationship that made it impossible for him to refuse Perry’s demands. “He could not simply say no. That inability had tragic consequences.”
The family is not persuaded. Perry’s mother specifically called out Iwamasa’s role as the one Perry trusted most, framing his betrayal as the case’s central wound.
Perry, who played Chandler Bing on Friends for the show’s 1994-to-2004 run, had been receiving ketamine therapy legally for depression. He sought larger doses than his doctor would prescribe, which is how the supply chain that killed him took shape.
The sentence today closes the criminal case. Whatever Garnett decides, it will be the final formal accounting for Perry’s death.
