And they have a point, juries are unpredictable, and defense lawyers are fiendishly clever.

I do believe that an enemy soldier or even an un-uniformed guerilla fighting for no flag or civil authority is not due the same legal protection as an American citizen accused of committing a crime in this country. I have no problem with that.

However, in this case, where Tsarnaev is unquestionably a citizen, and the crime is unquestionably committed on American soil, I don't see any way out of it.

The reading of rights, the Miranda Desision, is not an evil liberal plot to get criminals off the hook. Its been a feature of English Common Law at least since the 30s (the Brits call it "The Caution"), and it has legal precedent that goes far further back than that. I suspect it originated to protect suspects from confessing under torture.

According to Wikipedia, there are comparable civil protections in at least these other countries:

Equivalent rights in other countries
13.1 Australia
13.2 Bangladesh
13.3 Canada
13.4 European Union
13.4.1 England and Wales
13.4.2 France
13.4.3 Germany
13.4.4 Spain
13.5 Hong Kong
13.6 Israel
13.7 New Zealand
13.8 Philippines
13.9 Switzerland
13.10 Thailand
13.11 Ukraine

EDIT: And as TB has brought to our attention below, it isn't just Conservatives that tend to wink at legal niceties in time of war. Even Abraham Lincoln suspended habeas corpus during the Civil War.