Matthew Perry's Doctor Takes Plea Deal. What This Means for the Bigger Case | LAWYER EXPLAINS

Introduction [Music] new developments in the investigation of the death of friend star Matthew Perry one of the defendants charged has agreed to plead guilty ABC's Jacqueline Lee has more one of the two doctors charged in connection with actor Matthew Perry's death appeared in federal court this afternoon Dr Mark Chavez agreed to plead guilty to one count of conspiracy to distribute KINE the third person to plead guilty after the friend star was found dead in his Los Angeles home last year the US attorney says shavez was part of a broad criminal Network that Federal officials say involved the illegal distribution of large amounts of ketamine to the Beloved friend star five people were charged for crimes related to the death of Matthew Perry recently the actor most known of course for his role as Chandler Bing in the long running hit show friends two of the defendants in this case are doctors one is Perry's personal assistant another is an alleged Street dealer and the final one is an alleged big- time distributor well now one of those two doctors has recently taken a plea deal and a trial date has also been set for the remaining defendants who have pled not guilty so what does this mean for the other defendants and for the case as a whole let's get into it okay so first let's get into the Background details of this case since you've probably heard something about it but maybe not all of the specifics and we want to make sure that we are all on the same page here for one thing I'm sure you've heard that Matthew Perry star from the hit show friend sadly died on October 28th 2023 and given his very public battle with drug addiction over the years when he was found apparently dead in his hot tub it really didn't take much for most people to put together that there was probably a pretty good chance that drugs Were Somehow involved here if you're like me you were rooting for the guy to finally overcome his demons and wrestle his life away from the grips of drugs and addiction forever but sadly it wasn't that much of a surprise when the medical examiner determined that he died of an accidental overdose in the hot tub but obviously for many of us this was still sad news of course however I personally was a bit surprised when I saw a prosecutor signaling that despite the fact that the medical examiner determined this to be an accidental overdose they plann to take this as an opportunity to Target the Seedy dark underbelly of Hollywood drug Rings now the first we saw substantively of actual movement on this plan was on August 16th 2024 when the Department of Justice charged five people for charges related to conspiracy to distribute Matthew Perry ketamine that caused his death those defendants were Dr Mark Chavez a licensed Medical Doctor Eric Fleming an alleged cemy distributor kenthy omasa Perry's apparent livein assistant Dr Salvador Placencia a licensed medical doctor known as Dr P and Jasmine SAA who is allegedly known as the ketamine Queen just a side note in a case where the main charges around the death of a Hollywood actor or really anyone else by ketamine overdose it really doesn't bode all that well when people call you something like the ketamine Queen her lawyer I guess has also sort of grumbled about this label in court calling it a media friendly nickname that casts blame on the defendant but I can't tell from the reporting if he's arguing that the media made up this nickname or if this nickname came from her reputation elsewhere prior to the existence of these charges and when we're talking about you know the way that people get portrayed by the media when there are charges you know these are allegations of course that have yet to be proven that can make a fair difference now all of that said of course when these charges were announced we did get an indication from the doj that they really did their homework before pulling the trigger and pursuing these charges specifically us attorney Martin Estrada gave a statement that the investigation they conducted revealed a broad underground criminal Network responsible for Distributing large quantities of ketamine to Mr Perry and others this is pretty interesting because I'm actually kind of curious to see if we find out who these others are as well but anyway some of the results of this investigation were also made public around this time including text messages between some of the alleged co-conspirators this includes some from defendant Dr Placencia saying things like I wonder how much this will pay and saying that he wanted to be Perry's go-to for drugs and if you are someone who was rooting for Matthew Perry to overcome his addiction you probably don't love love hearing this doctor talk about him in this way but anyway on Friday August 30th Dr Mark Chavez was arraigned in Los Angels criminal court on one count of conspiring to distribute ketamine in connection with the death of Matthew Perry at the arraignment he indicated that he's going to take a plea deal and the judge allowed him to be released on a $50,000 unsecured bond with certain conditions one of those is unsurprisingly to agree not to practice medicine in the future and at the arraignment Dr Chavis attorney said he's already entered into an interim suspension of his medical license so he effectively cannot practice medicine at this point and the reason for that is to set up a surrender of his medical license so it sounds like he's also on track to never practice medicine again probably a good thing if what's being alleged is true and again he did take a plea deal apparently so I guess there are truth to these allegations as they relate to him at least and we'll see how all of that continues to develop so now What This Means for the Bigger Case what does all of this mean for the overall Matthew Perry drug ring case moving forward well first of all this isn't actually the first plea deal in this case Perry's personal assistant iwamasa and the alleged Street dealer Fleming apparently have also both taken plea deals however Dr Placencia and sa the alleged ketamine Queen herself have both pled not guilty in this case and it seems that Federal prosecutors are actually most interested in Prosecuting the cases against these two defendants anyway and let me tell you this is something that often happens in cases where there are multiple defendants prosecutors charge the whole group they offer plea deals to some of them so that they can proceed full steam ahead on the main targets of the case as you can imagine those ple deals are actually super helpful because it means that there are fewer gaps that the prosecutors need to fill in those harder cases and what I mean by that is a condition of the plea deal is almost always going to be that the defendant agrees to cooperate with prosecutors to give them information and to potentially testify as a witness against the other defendants in their respective trials we saw this for example in the rust film shooting cases where New Mexico prosecutors tried both rust film set armorer Hannah Gutierrez Reed and actor/producer Alec Baldwin for the onset shooting death of cinematographer helina Hutchins in that case a third person had been charged with these two and that was assistant director David Hall he quickly took a plea deal and ended up not having to serve any prison time just probation and he agreed to testify on behalf of the prosec against both of the other defendants and although Alec Baldwin's trial was cut short before Dave holiver testified he did in fact testify in the hannaher's read trial and when we look at these specific defendants in the Matthew Perry case you can see the particular points in The Logical chain of evidence that they fill which makes it easier for the prosecution to try both Dr Placencia and S for example looking at Dr Chavez you have an inside look at the operation of prescribing Perry the drugs as well as the community Communications between the two doctors that Dr Chavez can now verify are true and accurate then you have yamasa Matthew Perry's live-in personal assistant who can testify to the chain of custody of the drugs and their actual application to Perry's body then you have Fleming the alleged Street dealer who will probably testify to being some kind of gobet that communicated maybe between s the doctors and aasa and also filled in another link of that chain of custody of the ketamine that was ultimately used that kill Matthew Perry so now with those pieces in place this should make the prosecution's case much easier to just focus on what Dr Placencia did and what jazvin Sanga did on the other end of this chain of custody and to end up killing Matthew Perry and call me crazy but someone probably doesn't get a nickname like the queen of ketamine for just one deal in fact although SAA was initially released on bond this past March that Bond was revoked just last month in part due to the fact that she allegedly lives a very lavish lifestyle and with no legitimate source of employment than the means to flee both with an American and a British passport this suggests that she's supported financially through guess what drug dealing and according to the judge in this case she's been engaging in an unrelenting return to drug dealing after her involvement and not one but two overdose deaths and so I have a suspicion that there's probably a lot more to the story it relates to s's dealings in Hollywood and federal prosecutors are probably very interested in uncovering her connection to those other similar dealings elsewhere as well What Do YOU Think? needless to say it'll be very interesting to see where this goes but those are my thoughts what do you think a trial date was just set for March 4th 2025 are you interested in following more on this case as it proceeds towards that date do you have questions or maybe concerns about where this is likely to go let us know in the comments down below otherwise I hope you 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