3RD DCA TAKES JUDGE LANGER TO THE WOODSHED

For an old fashion spanking.   (Things are breaking quickly today. There are two new posts within the last hour.  So lean back, take a break, and read a bit.) 

We have been asked to do a regular feature where we update readers on the latest criminal decisions from the 3rd DCA. We have responded that the time required might well cut into the time we have set aside for drinking and gambling. However, sober today, we get a jump on our New Year's Resolutions by reporting the decision in CB v. Doubler. The title links to the Opinion. 

The opinion is a barn burner. It starts out: 

We have before us the twelfth in a series of cases spanning three years (all
but one in the last two years) in which the same trial judge has summarily ordered
an uncooperative juvenile directly to secure detention contrary to law.

The opinion continues:
In  each case, a panel of this Court ordered immediate release of the juvenile,
 frequently upon commendably swift confessions of error by the State. The
present case is legally indistinguishable—and barely factually distinguishable—
from those that have preceded it.


CB was arrested on disorderly conduct charges and was released. He missed a few  court dates and a pick up order was issued.  Then he was arrested on a new charge. The prosecution stood mute as Judge Langer sua sponte  (Latin for "doing something stupid without taking the time to think about it." Rumpole;s New American Legal Dictionary, Vol. 1, p. 324) ordered CB into custody.  The opinion points out that Langer ignored a "risk assessment" that did not require CB to be taken into custody. And the Court reminded Langer that it was a "principal of law" that Judges are required to take the 'risk assessment" into account, and that the 3rd DCA had "reminded" Langer of that principle a mere 90 days prior to his sua sponte act in CB's case. 

The PD raced (s/he did not walk, nor run) to the 3rd DCA on a Habeus Writ and within hours of receiving it the 3rd DCA opened its "Langer sua sponte" file and ordered CB released. 

From the opinion, here's what happened next, and it's not pretty: 

The next morning, June 6, 2008, the judge—again acting sua sponte (there's that phrase again) —placed  C.B.’s case back on the calendar for that afternoon, and informed the parties that  “[t]he Court will be issuing a rule to show cause in th[e] case.” When informed in  the afternoon that we already had granted C.B.’s petition for immediate release, the  judge perplexingly replied:  Well, I’m glad the Third DCA acted so quickly, because I was  going to release him today after I served him with a rule to show  cause as to why he should not be held in contempt of court for
missing three court hearings on his original case. I’m serving you all
with a copy of that rule to show cause, which is now set for June 10th
at 1:30, in open court. You are to notify your client accordingly. "

Then Judge Langer, in all his wisdom forgot what they taught him at the first day of Judge's school: NEVER DISPARAGE YOUR APPELLATE COURT ON THE RECORD! (duh). 

Here's what's Langer said (open mouth-insert foot and career): 

And, quite frankly, I’m well within the 72 hours that the statute
allows me to hold him, by the way. So I think perhaps the Third
DCA’s ruling is a bit premature, since he was just picked up on the
3rd of June and today is only the 6th, Counsel.  

Memo to Judge Langer: When the 3rd DCA vacates an order you issued the same day, stop f'ing with them.  Leave the case alone and move along little doggy. They will always- repeat- always get the last word and they always-repeat-always win. 



The 3rd DCA opinion continues:
It is clear to us from the transcript of the June 6 hearing that the judge’s invocation of section  985.255(1)(i) of the Florida Statutes at that time was nothing more than an effort at post-hoc justification of his June 3 order. See also B.M., 979 So. 2d at 314.
(similarly finding same trial judge’s effort to label B.M. an “absconder” to justify
detaining her for eighteen days to be an unfounded “post-hoc justification”).

And because the 3rd DCA is really a bit tired of releasing all of Judge Langer's defendants, they decided to add a  'coup de judge ': 

Stated otherwise, no person, not even a judge, is above the law...

We will not  permit the children of this state to be played as a game of ping-pong between  courts.
Petition granted.

Rumpole notes: Rarely are sitting judges treated as harshly as Judge Langer was in this case. 

Call us crazy, but for the New Year, Judge Langer just might want to reconsider his policy of sua sponte taking children into custody.