You’re correct. He did accept a plea bargain. The DOJ never filed charges to present the evidence to a grand jury to get an indictment.
IOW, you don’t have to be charged, indicted, tried and found guilty to end up in front of a judge for sentencing.
” ...you don’t have to be charged, indicted, tried and found guilty to end up in front of a judge for sentencing.”
I’m not a lawyer, but at a minimum it would seem that you have to be charged (or “indicted”) for a crime in order to be allowed to plea guilty to it! In any case, this article from Politico (I know ...) indicates that Gen. Petraeus *was* indicted.
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/04/david-petraeus-sentence-classified-information-117290