The real question is this:
Why do you, Arthur, think that criminals of any age should be able to escape the punishment for their crime just because they're "too young"?
For the same reason the law does. A six year old child lacks sufficient development to be convicted as an adult. By your "logic" a baby could be tried, convicted and executed if it threw some food on the floor, it's mother slipped, cracked her head and died. Who's to say the baby didn't mean to cause harm? If you think that's ridiculous then that's the absurdity that your own position lends itself to. If you
don't find it ridiculous then you have a serious problem...
Those who know right from wrong, of course.
Don't seem to be too many all that keen to support the notion of six year old kids being put to death on here JR. Silence doesn't equate to assent and you really aren't in any position to consider yourself in the "right" on this. If you think God would be happy with six year old children being treat the same as fully developed adults and swiftly, publicly and painfully executed then you'd be in a heck of a minority among just Christians alone and with good reason.
As Doser noted above, this is an appeal to emotion. In case you didn't know, that's a type of fallacious argument.
Killing children is kinda the thing that brings out emotions and it's 'almost' unbelievable that someone actually thinks that toddlers can possibly be regarded as guilty in intent as an adult.
Perhaps you should first attempt to justify your assertion that criminals should be able to escape punishment if they're below the age of [insert age here]...
Simple, they're children. An example of just how twisted your position is can be described as follows. We have laws that protect children from abuse, right? If a 24 year old molests an ll year old then the child is deemed the victim and completely innocent no matter how they might say they were willing and the adult is the guilty party. As it should be, right? Unfortunately, under your proposals, if the child stated they were willing and insisted they'd given consent, then to be consistent you'd have to deem the child as an equally guilty party. See why we have laws that protect children and take into account their age and development now?