LOS ANGELES (CN) - A doctor who supplied Matthew Perry with ketamine before the actor's death two years ago was sentenced Wednesday to 30 months in federal prison.

U.S. District Judge Sherilyn Peace Garnett Sherilyn Peace Garnett wasn't persuaded by Salvador Plasencia's argument that he had provided the ketamine to treat Perry's depression, pointing out that his plea agreement said there was no medical reason for him to provide the drug to the former "Friends" star. After he first spoke with Perry, the doctor texted an associate, "I wonder how much this moron will pay."

At the packed hearing in downtown Los Angeles, the judge brought up another text to Perry's assistant where Plasencia said he knew the actor was taking a break from using ketamine, but that he had been stocking up on the drug and that Perry's team could get it from his assistant should the doctor be out of town.

"That doesn't feel like a caring doctor-patient relationship - it feels like selling drugs," said Garnett, a Joe Biden appointee who imposed a prison term that fell short of the three years the government had sought, but nowhere near the one-day, time-served sentence Plasencia's lawyers had asked for.

Plasencia, 44, is the first of five defendants to be sentenced for supplying the actor - whose struggle with addiction has been well-publicized - with ketamine, a powerful anesthetic that sometimes is also used to treat chronic pain and depression. All five, including Perry's assistant, have pleaded guilty to their part in suppling the actor with the drug in the last month of his life.

The actor who rose to fame in the 1990s was found unresponsive in the hot tub of his Los Angeles home on Oct. 28, 2023. His autopsy, released a couple months later, found that the amount of ketamine in Perry's blood was in the range used for general anesthesia during surgery.

Perry's mother, step-mother, half-sister and younger sister gave emotional victim impact statements at the hearing.

His mother, Suzanne Morrison, told the judge how strong her son had been, recalling how he survived a burst to his colon, reportedly related to opiate abuse, in 2018. She compared the herculean efforts the doctors at that time made to save her son's life to the selfish motives of Plasencia in supplying ketamine for money.

"This was my boy and I knew how he addicted he was," Morrison said. "There was nothing moronic about this man. He even knew how to be a successful drug addict."

Plasencia made about $57,000 in just a few weeks from selling ketamine to Perry, prosecutors with the U.S. attorney's office in LA said.

The now-former doctor apologized to Perry's relatives at the hearing.

"I failed Mr. Perry and I failed his family," Plasencia said. "I should have protected him - as his mother said, I took an oath."

Plasencia, who had been free on bail, agreed to be taken into custody right away at the end of the hearing, a surprising turn that caught the judge off-guard since the prosecution had said he could self-surrender at a date in the near future.

Source: Courthouse News Service