Truth, Justice and the American Way

means a whole different thing these days.

Guilty plea the best news exhausted father could get

The most (to me) telling sentence in this pieces is

'Mr Hicks would only say that his son felt a guilty plea was the only way "he's going to get out".'

So his presumed guilt is tossed aside, by both sides it seems, to make way for expediency. The only way he felt he could escape torture was to plead guilty (and this presumes that he isn't guilty).

So this old phrase becomes

"Truth", "Justice" and the American Way