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Kenneth Iwamasa, the assistant who injected Matthew Perry with the fatal ketamine dose, was sentenced Wednesday to three years and five months in federal prison.
Kenneth Iwamasa, the live-in personal assistant who injected Matthew Perry with the ketamine doses that killed him in October 2023, was sentenced Wednesday to three years and five months in federal prison, closing the criminal case against the five people charged in the actor’s death.
The sentence, handed down by U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett in Los Angeles federal court, matched what prosecutors had requested. Iwamasa was also given two years of probation, fined $10,000, and ordered to surrender to authorities by noon on July 17.
“You were privy to his struggle with addiction,” Garnett told Iwamasa from the bench. “Your conduct was reckless, not just on the day of his death but in the days leading up to his death.”
The AP’s full courtroom account, including Iwamasa’s address to Perry’s family captures the hearing’s most unusual moment. Iwamasa, dressed in a charcoal-gray suit with his long white hair combed back, looked directly at Perry’s relatives as he apologized.
“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.”
The family was unmoved. NBC’s coverage of the sentencing and Keith Morrison’s direct address to Iwamasa notes that Perry’s stepfather, the Dateline correspondent, used his courtroom time to call out what he characterized as betrayal.
“You could have called someone,” Morrison said, his voice cracking, eyes on Iwamasa. “You didn’t do that, did you? But you didn’t because you were living a pretty damn good life. You were living like a king. That’s the motivation.”
Madeline Morrison, Perry’s half-sister, said in a written victim impact statement that Iwamasa deserved a harsher sentence than Jasveen Sangha, the dealer prosecutors called the Ketamine Queen who received 15 years in April. “Kenny even spoke at Matthew’s funeral. The person responsible for my brother’s death stood up and addressed the people who loved him most.”
Lisa Ferguson, Perry’s longtime business manager and the executor of his estate, made it more personal. “What you are,” she told Iwamasa, “is the monster who killed him.” She added: “He was terrified of dying. He wanted to live.”
The defense had asked for less. Iwamasa’s attorney Alan Eisner sought a six-month prison term with six months of home confinement, arguing that his client was an employee acting at the direction of a much more powerful boss. The Los Angeles Times’ reporting on the courtroom exchange between Eisner and the judge captures the pivotal moment that broke the defense argument.
“He was unable to say no,” Eisner said. “Unwilling, not unable,” Garnett cut in. “You’re right, he could have said no and shame on him for not saying no,” Eisner conceded. “He didn’t have the strength of character to do that.”
The numbers around the case have been quietly damning. Assistant U.S. Attorney Ian Yanniello told the court that Iwamasa obtained more than 70 vials of ketamine for Perry in a single month. He had found Perry unconscious at least twice before October 28 and continued the injections anyway.
On the day of Perry’s death, Iwamasa administered three doses. Perry asked him before the final injection to shoot me up a big one. Iwamasa then left to run errands and returned to find Perry face-down in the Jacuzzi.
The aftermath shaped the conspiracy charge. Iwamasa cleaned up ketamine bottles and syringes from the scene and omitted ketamine from the medication list when first questioned by police. He began cooperating only after a January 2024 search warrant.
The judge ruled out the harshest interpretation. Garnett found that Iwamasa did not abuse a position of trust, which would have added prison time, and said there is no hard evidence that he acted with malicious intent, though some would disagree.
Iwamasa had known Perry since around 1992. He moved into the actor’s Pacific Palisades home in 2022 at $150,000 per year. He was the first of the five defendants to plead guilty in August 2024 and became the prosecution’s most important witness.
Wednesday’s sentencing closes the federal case. Sangha received 15 years; Salvador Plasencia got 30 months; Mark Chavez got eight months of home detention; Erik Fleming got two years.
Iwamasa is 60. His self-surrender deadline is July 17.
