The Boston police suspended a man’s gun license after his ex-girlfriend accused him of threatening suicide via text messages.
On the day of the alleged texts, the woman contacted the police and told them of the messages.
She claimed that one of the text read “I’ll shoot myself in the face and leave a note that says the only reason I did this is [you].”
Another allegedly said “forget me and let me die.”
Without viewing and verifying the text messages, police went to the man’s apartment, seized his gun, and brought him to the hospital for a psychiatric evaluation.
The next day the police sent a written notice to the man informing him that his gun license had been suspended due to “suicidal statements in several text messages.”
Legally speaking, the police deemed him to be an “unsuitable person” under G. L. c. 140, § 131 (d) and (f), as amended by St. 2018, c. 123, §§ 11, 12, and St. 2022, c. 175, §§ 4-17A.
Both the district court and the superior court refused to overturn the suspension.
The man ultimately brought the matter to the Appeal Courts.
Today the Appeals Court issued a slip opinion upholding the suspension.
According to the Appeals Court,
The text messages provided a reasonable ground for the commissioner’s decision to suspend the plaintiff’s license. As the hearing judge found, and we agree, “[a]ny one of these text messages would[] [have] alerted [the licensing officer] to the possibility that [the plaintiff] intended self-harm,” and [c]ollectively, the text messages provided reliable and credible information that [the plaintiff] posed a safety risk to himself or quite possibly to [her ex-girlfriend].” Although the plaintiff testified that Jane Doe fabricated the text messages, it was within the hearing judge’s discretion not to credit his testimony.
The full text of the slip opinion is attached below.