NPR: No law mandates reading Miranda rights

[BlueStreak]

9. Exactly. It is abundantly clear that everybody has a right to counsel.

The SCOTUS has been asked to clarify a whole bunch of boundary conditions, and what it comes down to is that poverty is not an acceptable reason to deny counsel, so the people have to pay for competent counsel if the accused cannot afford that. And as far as "reading the rights", that simply follows from the right itself. It was an issue because cops would try everything to NOT give their prisoners the right of counsel, so the SCOTUS wisely said, "It is a fundamental right, and you have to tell them it is their right before you interrogate them."

And then somebody brought up the exception to the rule, which is basically, "if you know the suspect has put snakes on a plane, venomous snakes that will kill people on that plane, can you do an immediate interrogation to find out WHICH plane." And the SCOTUS wisely said that was a reasonable exception -- in the case of IMMINENT danger to the public or police officers. But that's it. There aren't any other exceptions.