Yesterday, Dr. Mark Chavez, one of the doctors arrested in relation to the October 2023 death of Matthew Perry (Friends, Fools Rush In), was in court and expected to enter a guilty plea to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. According to Deadline, Chavez was instead released on bond.
Chavez was arrested by the feds on August 15 along with four other people in the investigation of Perry’s drug-induced death. The 54-year-old San Diego-based doctor originally pleaded not guilty. However, after having inked a plea deal with U.S. Attorney Martin Estrada’s office, he was expected to enter a guilty plea during his arraignment yesterday in Los Angeles. Instead, Chavez was released by U.S. Magistrate Judge Jeanbluth on a $500,000 bond.
“He is trying to do everything in his power to right the wrong that happened here,” defense lawyer Matthew Binninger said outside the federal court. “He didn’t accept responsibility today, but only because it wasn’t on the calendar.”
While the defendant remains a free man for now, he has been stripped of his medical license, and his change of plea hearing has been pushed to the fall. According to Binninger, the hearing could take place in October. There, Chavez is still expected to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute ketamine. The charge carries a ten-year sentence in federal prison.
Perry died in his Los Angeles home on October 28, 2023. On December 15, 2023, the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office found from the toxicology report that Perry had passed away from the “acute effects of ketamine.” The autopsy report also cited other factors at play, such as drowning, coronary artery disease and the effects of a drug used to treat opioid use disorder called buprenorphine.
Chavez did not directly provide the ketamine to Perry. However, he allegedly obtained the drug from his former ketamine clinic and sold it to his friend and fellow defendant, Dr. Salvador Plasencia. Plasencia allegedly obtained the drug through Chavez as well as Jasveen Sangha, a woman that prosecutors have nicknamed “the ketamine queen,” and then passed it on to Perry. The three were arrested on August 15 alongside Eric Fleming, another one of Perry’s distributors, as well as his ex-live-in assistant Kenneth Iwamasa, who allegedly injected Perry with ketamine on multiple occasions.
Perry had a well-documented decades-long battle with addiction, which he discussed in his 2022 memoir, Friends, Lovers, and the Big Terrible Thing. According to Deadline, the charged doctors knew about this addiction and sought to take advantage of it. In a text message about the actor, Plasencia wrote to Chavez, “I wonder how much this moron will pay.”
The U.S. Attorney’s Office has not made any further comments on Chavez or the Perry case, but Deadline’s law enforcement sources say there is a “high likelihood” that more arrests over Perry’s death could be made in the coming weeks.