Though prosecutors said sentencing guidelines called for Mr. Fleming to be given 46 to 57 months, they argued for a “downward departure,” saying in court papers that he had quickly accepted responsibility for his crimes and had agreed to cooperate with the government’s investigation.
The prosecutors wrote that Mr. Fleming had “provided information to law enforcement, including identifying Sangha as the source of the ketamine that defendant supplied to Mr. Perry.”
Mr. Fleming is the fourth of five people charged in connection with Mr. Perry’s death to be sentenced. Ms. Sangha, whom prosecutors called “a more culpable defendant,” was sentenced in April to 15 years in prison. Two former doctors, Salvador Plasencia and Mark Chavez, were each sentenced in December. Mr. Plasencia received 30 months in prison and Mr. Chavez received three years of supervised release, including eight months of home detention.
Mr. Iwamasa is scheduled to be sentenced this month.
Mr. Fleming’s lawyers had asked for a “split sentence” of 12 months: three months in prison and nine months in a residential drug treatment facility, where they said he could “continue the hard work he has put into maintaining his sobriety.”
In the lawyers’ sentencing memorandum, they said the death of Mr. Fleming’s stepmother had sent him into a “tailspin,” causing him to relapse into heavy drug use and fall into a depression. He ended up “jobless and penniless, living on the couch of his younger sister’s home, feeling worthless, despondent and alone,” according to the memorandum.
It was then, in early October 2023, that Mr. Fleming got a phone call and a text message from a close friend, who told him that, while she had been helping obtain ketamine for Mr. Perry, she could no longer do so because she was “stuck in a drug treatment program,” the sentencing memo said.
“She asked Mr. Fleming to help her out by finding the ketamine Mr. Perry wanted,” the lawyers wrote, adding later that “in a moment he will regret forever, Mr. Fleming agreed to help.”
