On June 30, Jimmy Shane Click was denied parole by the Alabama Board of Paroles and Pardons.

The reason this means something to me is that I first learned about Shane when I was having my hair cut and had just moved to Durango, 30 years ago. My hairdresser at the time suggested I might want to write a book about this boy who had been diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, suffered severe depression and heard a voice in his head.

He turned out to be her son. She told me that at the age of 17 he was involved in a robbery and the murder of his former babysitter and drug supplier. He was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.

At first, I just shook my head. I was writing books for children.

But as the years passed and I learned more about this young man and how he’d never had a single infraction while serving in one of the most dangerous prisons in the country, his case began to interest me.

In 2005, Roper v. Simmons invalidated the death penalty for all juvenile offenders under the age of 18. Then Miller v. Alabama held that the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment forbids the mandatory sentencing of life in prison without the possibility of parole for juvenile homicide offenders.

I began to correspond with Shane and finally went to meet him in prison. I learned that he had been working in the library since he arrived in 1991, educating himself because as a felon he was not allowed to take classes. He studied the Bible, learned to meditate and became an assistant to the prison’s chaplain. He was soon delivering deeply felt services to his fellow inmates, who to this day call him “The Bishop.” He mentored dozens of young inmates and started an honor dorm where 172 inmates now live peacefully. He initiated restorative justice with his victim’s family.

I am now working on a book about Shane and his mother, which might seem like an odd project for me. In fact, it’s the ultimate children’s story, as well as the tale of a parent’s heartbreak. Through the years, I heard the sad story of his illness, the difficulty getting an accurate diagnosis and finding good therapy, the ordeal of finding medications that could control his schizophrenia. Finally, lithium seemed to do the job. It was only after an incompetent counselor took him off the lithium that he first got into trouble.

In 2016, in Montgomery v. Louisiana, the Supreme Court held that its previous Miller ruling should be applied retroactively to inmates previously convicted of murder committed as juveniles and sentenced to LWOP. This put Jimmy Shane Click up for resentencing. And indeed, the Alabama Board of Parole and Pardons re-sentenced him to life, which gave him the possibility of parole.

Shane’s mother lives in Durango. If he is paroled and the parole board permits it, he would like to live in Colorado. I think he would love to work with troubled youths who are having the same difficulties he once had. He knows how to mentor.

The United States is the only nation that sentences people to life without parole for crimes committed before the age of 18. I had hoped times were changing. In fact, 25 states – of which Colorado is one – have banned life sentences without the possibility of parole for juveniles; in nine additional states no one is serving LWOP for crimes committed before age 18.

Unfortunately, the Supreme Court’s new conservative majority undermined the trend that helped benefit juvenile offenders, holding in Jones v. Mississippi that a juvenile could again be sentenced to LWOP without any finding of permanent incorrigibility, leaving the sentencing to the unbridled discretion of the court.

We all make mistakes. We all deserve a second chance. While Shane’s mistake was particularly bad, he has devoted his entire adult life to healing his mental illness, rehabilitating himself and improving his prison community. If those efforts don’t entitle someone to parole, how can we trust the system to work? What message do we send to inmates? What incentive do we give them for rehabilitation?

There was no sensible reason for the Alabama Board of Parole and Pardons to have denied Shane parole after his 32 years of pristine behavior while incarcerated. The parole board failed Jimmy Shane Click.

And the U.S. Supreme Court, with its recent ruling, has reopened the door to arbitrary sentencing of life without parole. In doing so, it failed all of us.

Katherine Leiner has left her heart in Durango, where she lived from 1988 to 2017, but is presently living in New York City. She is the author of fiction, non-fiction, books for children and poetry.