Patriot Brief
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Sentence handed down: Dr. Mark Chavez received home confinement, supervised release, and community service after pleading guilty to ketamine distribution conspiracy.
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Role in the case: Chavez supplied ketamine to another doctor who provided it to Matthew Perry, though it was not the fatal dose.
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Other defendants: Additional defendants have been sentenced or are awaiting sentencing in the ongoing federal case.
Another chapter has closed in the Matthew Perry ketamine case and it did not end with prison bars. A San Diego physician who admitted to illegally supplying ketamine linked to the actor’s final weeks will instead serve his sentence at home. Federal prosecutors and the court pointed to cooperation, remorse, and a lesser role in the overdose as reasons for leniency. The decision stands in contrast to harsher sentences handed down to others involved and continues to raise uncomfortable questions about accountability, medical ethics, and how controlled substances made their way into the hands of a struggling Hollywood star.
Trending Politics News reports:
A San Diego physician who helped sell ketamine to the late ‘Friends’ actor Matthew Perry avoided prison on Tuesday and was instead sentenced to home confinement.
U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett sentenced Dr. Mark Chavez, a 55-year-old former physician from San Diego, to eight months of home confinement, three years of supervised release, and 300 hours of community service.
Chavez had pleaded guilty in October 2024 to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine in connection with the 2023 death of actor Matthew Perry.
Chavez admitted to obtaining ketamine through fraudulent means, including false representations to a wholesale distributor and a prescription issued in a former patient’s name without consent. He supplied the drug to another physician, Dr. Salvador Plasencia, who then provided it to Perry in the weeks before the actor’s death.
Authorities noted that the ketamine Chavez supplied was used by Perry but was not the dose that caused his fatal overdose on October 28, 2023.
As additional defendants await sentencing, the case continues to spotlight the risks of off-label ketamine use and the ethical failures that enabled it. For many observers, the outcome leaves lingering questions about responsibility when celebrity, medicine, and profit collide.
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