Justice closes a tragic chapter
The news came yesterday as a late echo of a tragedy that shocked the world. A federal judge, Sherilyn Peace Garnett, handed down a sentence of 15 years in prison for Jasveen Sangha, the woman who pleaded guilty to selling the ketamine that killed Matthew Perry in 2023.
“You will have to demonstrate extraordinary resilience,” the magistrate told him, using the same words with which Sangha had described his own personal improvement at the beginning of the hearing. A judicial wink with a bitter taste.
The weight of decisions
Sangha, 42, is the third person sentenced among the five defendants linked to the actor’s overdose. But her case is different: she is the only one whose agreement included acknowledging having caused Perry’s death. In court, he said he wore his shame “like a jacket.”
“These weren’t mistakes. They were horrible decisions,” she admitted. Decisions that, in his words, “destroyed people’s lives and those of their family and friends.”
Prosecutors were not as compassionate in their description. In court documents she was painted as a ‘Ketamine Queen’, running a sophisticated operation targeting wealthy clients to finance a lavish lifestyle.
Meanwhile, her lawyers argued that the time she has already been detained since August of last year should be sufficient punishment. They highlighted his lack of criminal record and his exemplary conduct in prison.
The pain that lasts
The human weight of this story was provided by Keith Morrison, the iconic Dateline correspondent and Perry’s stepfather. With that deep voice that we all recognize, he told the judge that he and Suzanne, the actor’s mother, live with “daily, overwhelming sadness and pain.”
“There was a spark in that man that I haven’t seen anywhere else,” Morrison said. “It should have had another act. Two more acts.”
Perry was found dead in the jacuzzi of his home in Los Angeles. The forensic report was clear: ketamine, a substance used as an anesthetic, was the main cause.
A judicial puzzle
Judge Garnett explained that she is calibrating each sentence so that the whole makes sense among the five defendants. Sangha pleaded guilty in September to using his home to distribute prohibited substances and to three specific counts of distributing ketamine… one of them resulting in death.
He also admitted to selling drugs to another man, Cody McLaury, who died of an overdose in 2019.
And here comes the most revealing fact: the prosecution maintains that Sangha continued selling drugs even after pleading guilty, which for them demonstrates a total lack of remorse.
Fifteen years behind bars for decisions that changed lives forever. Justice has spoken, but the void left by Chandler Bing is still there.
