OAKLAND — Former Tang Center physician Robert Kevess was sentenced Friday to five years of probation after pleading no contest to multiple counts involving sexual misconduct with patients.

The Alameda County District Attorney charged Kevess in 2011 with 19 counts for alleged sex crimes against six former male patients, including counts of sexual penetration of an unconscious victim with a foreign object and sexual exploitation of a patient.

Since then, several counts of sexual assault were dismissed from the charges. The remaining five counts were felonies, relating to California’s business and professions code rules for sexual conduct by physicians. Charges relating to two of the victims were also dismissed from the case.

At Friday’s hearing, which took place at the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse, Alameda County Deputy District Attorney Chris Infante recommended that Kevess be sentenced to 16 months of incarceration and registered as a sex offender.

Alameda County Superior Court Judge Jon Rolefson decided against incarceration, however, pointing to a doctor’s evaluation indicating that a medication, Mirapex, that Kevess took for restless leg syndrome caused him to experience hypersexuality and reduced impulse control.

Kevess, according to the judge, was found to have taken the medication during the period in which he was reported to have engaged in sexual misconduct. According to reports reviewed by the judge, the drug’s side effects were not well known previously and Kevess had been taking triple the normal dosage.

“What Mr. Kevess did was unethical, immoral and unlawful,” Rolefson said at the hearing. “(The medication) answers a lot of questions. It doesn’t excuse anything.”

Rolefson also decided against ordering Kevess to register as a sex offender. Kevess can no longer practice medicine and does not appear at risk of engaging in similar acts of sexual misconduct again, the judge said.

The sentencing matched the request of Robert Beles, Kevess’ attorney, who argued for probation but not prison time. In an address to the judge, Beles described instances of Kevess’ conduct as mutual, albeit unethical. According to Infante, though, the charges encompassed allegations that patients did not know what was happening when Kevess initiated sexual contact.

“He was a man of discipline, a man of commitment,” Beles said at the hearing of Kevess’ medical career. “He takes all of that and he crashes that and now he loses that.”

The mother and sister of one of the patients traveled from Los Angeles to attend the hearing after being invited by the court. The judge did not allow them to speak, however, because the patient had died and his case was subsequently dropped from the charges.

The deceased patient graduated from the campus in 2010 and was allegedly sexually abused while being treated by Kevess. In 2012, his parents filed a suit against Kevess, claiming that the doctor’s actions had caused their son to commit suicide. The suit was later dismissed.

After the hearing, the patient’s family members expressed disappointment that Kevess had not been subjected to harsher sentencing.

“My heart goes out to everyone whose lives have been affected by everything here,” Rolefson said at the end of the hearing.