Can a Municipal Court (Of Record) issue a Court Order for telephone records in a criminal investigation. The possible offenses would be Class B or higher offenses. There would not be a pending case before a court yet. It would be strictly an investigative tool at this point. I'm getting mized information and could use some authority on the issue.

Your officers should get a grand jury subpoena for the records. What you describe does not seem to fit within the definition of a court subpoena under Article 24 of the CCP.

IF you are talking about a court order pursuant to Article 2.10 CCP, then I would look first to 2.09, where it says who are magistrates.

PLUG ALERT!!

The TDCAA "Warrants Manual for Arrest, Search and Seizure" written by Ted Wilson and Tom Bridges (my former boss) is an excellent source for these types of questions.

I am specifically referring to a Court Order based on CCP 18.21(5) for telephone records. Can I use a municipal court of record to issue the Order regardless of the level of offense. The question has been raised as to whether the municipal court can issue such an Order for higher than Class C. I did refer to the Manual and could not find the answer. I appreciate all the feedback.

You could look at it this way: A district judge handling your felony case is a lot more likely to be deferential to a fellow district judge than he is to a municipal court judge. That said, Article 18.21 does not define judge in the definitions section. Certain other sections of article 18.21 specify that a district judge must sign the warrant or order. Cf. Sec. 2(g), Sec. 14(a). Section 5 just says "judge," so that indicates that some other judge can do it if you are willing to take the risk noted above. Plus, if some bigshot ISP brings in Liar, Liar, Pants & Afire from New York City to fight the order, your district judge is probably more likely to stand up to them. Hypothetically. I don't know when Sections 4 and 5 snuck in there, but we probably did a bad thing by letting it happen.