A plea bargain reached over the summer allowed the man accused of murdering a police officer on December 10 to avoid jail time. Had the suspect, Steven Armento, served what could have been a one-year sentence, the 28-year-old officer, Daniel Enchautegui, might be alive today.

Adhering to a plea deal arranged between a judge and the probation department at Armento’s arraignment, the lifelong criminal was sentenced in August to a one-year conditional discharge and a $500 fine for setting his pit bull on a neighbor’s dog and beating up the owner on March 6, 2004.

“He wasn’t sent to jail because probation recommended exactly what I sentenced him to,” the sentencing judge, Thomas Daly of Yonkers City Court, said. Although Judge Daly said he generally considers a defendant’s file before dictating the sentence, Jeffrey Fagan, a professor of law at Columbia University, said, “In New York, they sentence you for what you did and not what you did in the past,” except where the defendant is a predicate felon.

The plea deal was reached because at the time “the judge was not dealing with a suspected cop shooter,” a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration for New York State Courts, David Bookstaver, said. “It was a neighborhood dispute.”

The office of the Westchester district attorney, Jeanine Pirro, said that at the arraignment for last year’s crimes, prosecutors requested the judge set bail at $20,000, but the judge instead decided to release Armento on his own recognizance.

The district attorney’s office said that Armento pleaded guilty to the top charges of assault, torturing animals, criminal mischief, and a violation of harassment, all misdemeanors.

“We were recommending jail from the outset, but the judge gets the final word,” the Westchester chief assistant district attorney, Richard Weill, said. At the arraignment, the judge decided to impose the probation department’s pre-sentencing recommendation of no jail time, he said. The Westchester probation department did not respond to a request for comment.

“Given the history, we recommended jail,” Mr. Weill said.

Armento, 48, has been convicted of three felonies in Westchester for which he served state time: attempted burglary in 1979; attempted criminal possession of stolen property in 1989, and criminal possession of stolen property in 1996. He has been arrested an additional 10 times dating back to 1976, on charges including criminal mischief, criminal possession of a weapon, grand larceny, criminal possession of a controlled substance, and criminal trespass.

Armento and his alleged accomplice, actor Lillo Brancato Jr., 29, were arraigned in a conference room yesterday morning at Jacobi Medical Center in the Bronx, where they have been recuperating since the incident. Armento was charged with first-degree murder, burglary, and criminal possession of a weapon. Mr. Brancato, who has three open cases for criminal possession of a controlled substance and two charges of disorderly conduct, was arraigned on charges of second-degree murder and burglary. Armento was alleged to have been the shooter in the early-morning killing of the police officer. Their next court date is January 9, according to the Bronx district attorney’s office.

The suspects allegedly broke into an apartment in a building next-door to En chautegui’s Bronx home. When the off duty officer went to investigate, Armento allegedly shot him to death. Before he died, Enchautegui fired several rounds, allegedly injuring both suspects.

After the arraignment, the president of the Patrolmen’s Benevolent Association, Patrick Lynch, held a press conference in front of the 49th Precinct, in close proximity to the hospital. Standing at the podium with Enchautegui’s parents, Mr. Lynch called for the state’s capital-punishment law to be rewritten and therefore enforceable, and the strengthening of the gun laws and penalties for people who attack police officers.

Enchautegui’s killers, Mr. Lynch said, should “never ever see the light of day.”

Mr. Lynch also lobbied for the hiring of more police officers and an increase in salary. Police officers should be paid, he said, “like the heroes that they are.”