A Brooklyn jury convicted Cesar Rodriguez today of first-degree manslaughter for killing his 7-year-old stepdaughter, Nixzmary Brown.

The jury could have convicted Rodriguez, 29, of second-degree murder, which might have put him behind bars for life. Instead, the manslaughter conviction, which came on the fourth day of the jury’s deliberations, will send Rodriguez to prison for up to 25 years.

Yesterday, the jury spent much of the day asking for the judge to repeat the different criteria to charge for manslaughter versus murder. In opting for manslaughter, the jury apparently found that Rodriguez did not act with “depraved indifference to human life,” the main clause which sets a second-degree murder distinction apart from first-degree manslaughter.

The trial lasted eight weeks and led to an examination and eventual reform of the city’s Administration of Children’s Services. When the victim, Nixzmary Brown, showed signs of abuse in school, city workers visited her home in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn several times in early January 2006 but were not successful in establishing contact with the family.

On January 10, the Administration for Children’s Services told workers to visit the home after hours, but the action was taken too late. Nixzmary was found dead on the morning of January 11.

Both Rodriguez and Nixzmary Brown’s mother, Nixzaliz Santiago, also 29, were charged with murder for beating the child to death. The two were initially supposed to be tried together, but delays in Ms. Santiago’s trial led prosecutors to pursue Rodriguez first.

In court, Rodriguez’s lawyer, Jeffrey Schwartz, argued that Ms. Santiago was solely responsible for the killing.

If convicted in her separate trial, Ms. Santiago will face the life sentence that Rodriguez escaped today. Ms. Santiago is scheduled to appear in court on March 26 before a Brooklyn Supreme Court judge, Patricia Dimango, the Brooklyn district attorney’s office announced today. No date has been set for the beginning of her trial.