Slash’s ex-wife Perla Hudson is urging a judge to go easy on the Los Angeles woman who admitted she supplied the liquid ketamine that led to actor Matthew Perry’s overdose death in a hot tub two years ago.
In a two-page letter submitted to the court and obtained by Rolling Stone, Hudson praises Jasveen Sangha as a good friend who helped her weather her divorce from the Guns N’ Roses rocker. Sangha, dubbed the “Ketamine Queen” by prosecutors, pleaded guilty last September and is set to be sentenced on April 8.
Sangha, 42, is asking for time served, arguing she’s a first-time offender and has been in federal custody since her indictment and arrest in August 2024. Prosecutors are asking for a sentence of 15 years in prison followed by three years of supervised release.
“I have known Jasveen since 2012, and over the years she has become like a younger sister to me and a beloved ‘fairy godmother’ to my sons,” Hudson wrote in her letter to the court filed Wednesday. Hudson called Sangha a highly educated, family-oriented, and “devout Sikh woman” who frequently attended her son’s birthday parties and other family events over the years.
“When I went through my divorce, one of the most difficult times of my life, Jasveen was a constant and loyal friend,” Hudson wrote. “Coming from a celebrity world, I’ve often experienced people who wanted something from me or my family. But Jasveen was never like that — she wasn’t there to take, only to give. She showed up when I needed her most, whether with a simple act of kindness like soup and balloons when someone was ill, or by helping me write school applications for my son. Her friendship was selfless, steady, and genuine.”
She said Sangha joined her in raising funds for the non-profit organization BuildOn. She said they planned to travel to Guatemala to help build a school, but the trip was canceled due to political unrest. They were planning a subsequent trip to Malawi when Sangha’s “current legal situation” made that impossible, she said. Still, Sangha has been helping Hudson build a new non-profit, providing input on mission statements, prospectuses, and board development from behind bars, she wrote.
“She has never been violent or malicious. She is not the person that her current charges may suggest, albeit she has made some big mistakes. I can attest that she is a loving, giving, and faithful human being who has been a blessing in my life and the lives of my children,” Hudson wrote. “I respectfully ask the court to consider her true character and sentence her accordingly, with understanding and leniency. Jasveen is not a danger to society — she is someone who, when given the chance, will continue to enrich and uplift those around her.”
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Perry, best known for his role on Friends, died on Oct. 28, 2023, at 54 from the acute effects of ketamine, his autopsy determined. When she pleaded guilty last year, Sangha admitted she sold dozens of vials of liquid ketamine to Perry in October 2023 in multiple transactions. Using a middleman as her intermediary, she packaged the ketamine in unmarked containers that did not indicate its strength. On the day of his death, Perry’s live-in assistant injected the actor multiple times before finding him unresponsive in a hot tub, the assistant agreed in his own plea deal.
After learning of Perry’s death, Sangha instructed the middleman to delete their messages and adjusted her own encrypted communications to erase records, prosecutors previously said. As part of her deal, Sangha also pleaded guilty to a 2019 ketamine sale that resulted in another man’s fatal overdose.
Sangha was one of five defendants charged in the case, which prosecutors described as a network of suppliers who exploited Perry’s addiction. Two doctors, the middleman, and Perry’s assistant all accepted plea deals. Prosecutors said the group prioritised profit over safety, providing the drug despite clear warning signs that Perry was abusing the dissociative anesthetic.
Sangha’s lawyers are contesting the quantity of drugs seized from her apartment, arguing that investigators tested only 27 pills out of more than three pounds of suspected methamphetamine.
“The court should not attribute the full seizure weight to methamphetamine without evidence showing that the sample reliably supports that conclusion,” her lawyer, Alexandra Kazarian, wrote in a sentencing memo. She said the record does not explain how the 27 pills were selected or whether the larger batch was uniform, undermining the “extrapolation” used to calculate Sangha’s sentencing range.
Kazarian also disputed the government’s claim that Sangha operated a stash house. While acknowledging evidence of drugs, cash, packaging materials, a scale, and some transactions tied to the apartment, she argued that prosecutors had not shown that drug distribution was a primary use of the residence. There was no evidence, she wrote, of regular customer traffic, surveillance indicating the apartment functioned as an ongoing storefront, or any meaningful comparison between its lawful use as a home and its alleged use for drug transactions.
The two doctors convicted of supplying Perry with large quantities of liquid ketamine before his death were sentenced last December. Dr. Salvador Plasencia was handed a sentence of 30 months behind bars, while Dr. Mark Chavez was given eight months of home detention and three years of supervised release.
Kenneth Iwamasa, the assistant who gave Perry his final injection, is set to be sentenced on April 22. Erik Fleming, who acted as Sangha’s middleman, is scheduled to be sentenced on April 29.
From Rolling Stone US
