3d DCA Watch -- Supplemental Spankdown Edition

I don't usually cover criminal or juvenile in 3d DCA Watch (Rumpy has the MIA criminal beat more than adequately covered) but this 3d DCA spankdown of Judge Langer transcends its limited genre:

In B.M., we painstakingly elucidated the statutory parameters which bind the judges of the juvenile courts of this state in the detention of juveniles. As in R.G. v. State, 817 So. 2d 1019, 1020 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002), we were of the hope “that the message to this trial judge should be clear . . . .” B.M., 979 So. 2d at 310. We also recognized that the trial judge, the same one as here, may have been acting from the best of motives in repeatedly ignoring the same legislative guidance. Nevertheless, as our colleague in the First District Court of Appeal, Judge Philip Padovano recently wrote when faced with the nearly identical circumstances in K.E. v. Department of Juvenile Justice, 963 So. 2d 864, 868 (Fla. 1st DCA 2007):

It is not for us, as judges, to question the wisdom of the legislation. Rather, our task is simply to carry it out. Section 985.255 establishes the criteria for detaining a child, pending the outcome of a juvenile delinquency case. A decision to detain a child must be made according to the statutory criteria.

Stated otherwise, no person, not even a judge, is above the law. If a trial judge is not satisfied with that law, he is free to make that fact known to his legislators, as is any other citizen. Meanwhile, we reiterate to the trial judge in this case, in the same words we iterated to him a few short months ago, “just as the trial judge in this case had the ‘right to expect that [C.B. would] would respect his orders,’ . . . ‘we, as a court created by the constitution for the purpose of supervising the lower court, are entitled to the same obedience.’” B.M., 979 So. 2d at 318 (quoting State ex rel. Schwartz v. Lantz, 440 So. 2d 446, 450 (Fla. 3d DCA 1983)). We will not permit the children of this state to be played as a game of ping-pong between courts.

This isn't my area of the law, and certainly all trial judges are obligated to follow the dictates of the appellate court and of course the operative legislation. But is there some intellectual point to Judge Langer's actions here? I mean, is he by his repeated violation of the law attempting to express some point to the 3d DCA that perhaps the 3d should address more directly? Is there anything within the legislative mandate that the 3d can do to assist the trial courts in situations where the minor repeatedly refuses to appear for hearings? The 3d makes no effort to address that point.

Or is Judge Langer's actions here an expression of simple frustration with the system as presently constituted?

The Herald's coverage is here, and Billy Shields files his report here.