Introduction American supreme court pronounced in its historic judgment in 2005, that offenders below the age of 18 would not face the death penalty, even though they perpetrated heinous crimes. This classification calls for making a person lesser guilty owing to adolescent age. The ruling is hinged on the issue of culpability. In other words, it is criminal blameworthiness. The cardinal issue at hand is whether a person can solely be held responsible for a crime committed by him or some extraneous or other factors also contributed significantly to the construction of crime. Culpability is at variance with competence. It is a function of the offender s’ condition of mind right at the time of the commission of the offense. It also combines the factors that are instrumental in increasing or decreasing the degree of the onus of the crime committed. This ruling is in fact affront to the sweeping trend of supporting stringent penalties for juveniles. Influenced by the high crime rate and consequently public safety at stake, every state felt justified during the last decade to lower the age at which juveniles could face trial and be sentenced to punishment for wider categories of crime. “These changes coupled with other arrangements have resulted in the prosecution of more than 200,000 youths as adults in the criminal justice administration system every year” (Allard, P., & Young, M. (2002). Prosecuting juveniles in adult court: Perspectives for policymakers and practitioners) . Those who are in favor of tight laws for youth think that those youths who have committed heinous crimes deserve to be properly condemned. If we merely slap on their wrist, they would be encouraged to commit more serious nature of crimes. They further argue that it is highly crude to continue to rely on a system, which is outdated, and unfit to cater for the deterrent functions against the increased wave of crime. There is growing fashion among youth to entangle themselves in fistfights in educational places, equipping themselves with guns and others, which fall in the category of adult offenses. Media often drums up the lead stories of these crimes, which cause much sensation. “Just as adults are often confused on how to treat teenagers, societies also struggle how to deal with youthful offenders” (Constitutional Rights Foundation, Juvenile Offenders). The juvenile justice system However, the juvenile justice system assumes that adolescents are not the same as adults and this makes them lesser deserving for the responsibility of a given crime and they must be given certain waivers when they are being tried. It has been the repeated contention of the legal system that the criminal penalty should be commensurate with the magnitude of the injury caused coupled with the blameworthiness of the person committing the crime. The onus of the crime on a person for a crime rests upon the conditions in which it has been committed along with the actual offender. Conventionally, courts have taken into account several factors, which also contribute to the perpetuation of a crime. These factors have the effect of decreasing the culpability of the defendant. These include bettered decision-making ability owing to the distorted mind; leverage of the conditions under which one has no choice but to recourse to violent crime and the character of the person. Such factors in no way recommend that an offender should not be tried in a court of law or should be given absolute exemp