Gov. Christine Gregoire of Washington said Wednesday that the state would temporarily stop accepting parolees from Arkansas, escalating the conflict between the states over a man believed to have killed four police officers, days after his release from jail.

Mr. Clemmons, who had a lengthy criminal history in Arkansas, was granted clemency in 2000 by that state's governor at the time, Mike Huckabee.

He moved to the Tacoma area in 2004 while on parole. On Nov. 23, while facing new charges here in Washington of assaulting a police officer and raping a 12-year old female relative, Mr. Clemmons was released on bail. On Sunday, the authorities say, he shot the four officers to death while they sat in a coffee shop near Tacoma, Wash.

At issue is whether Mr. Clemmons should have been eligible for bail. Washington officials have said that state law made him eligible for bail under the new charges he faced here and that the bail on which he was released in November, $190,000, was consistent with those charges.

But they also say Arkansas could have prevented his release by keeping in place a so-called no-bail warrant it had rescinded in July. Arkansas officials say that warrant became moot because it applied to fugitives and Mr. Clemmons was in custody in Washington. At Washington's request, Arkansas issued a second warrant in October, but Washington officials say that warrant did not make clear that Arkansas wanted Mr. Clemmons held without bail.

The seemingly technical debate over bail has accompanied a louder political one surrounding Mr. Huckabee's clemency policies. Shortly after the shooting, Mr. Huckabee, considered a front-runner for the Republican nomination for president in 2012, issued a statement blaming "a series of failures in the criminal justice system in both Arkansas and Washington State" for Mr. Clemmons's alleged recent crimes.

Matt DeCample, a spokesman for Gov. Mike Beebe of Arkansas, a Democrat, said Mr. Huckabee's comments appeared to have ignited the overall debate and frustrated Ms. Gregoire, a Democrat.

"We fully understand her offense and outrage in this tragic time at the comments that a former governor of this state made about the law enforcement and judicial systems in Washington State," Mr. DeCample said.

"Having said that," Mr. DeCample added, shifting to the bail dispute, "every review that we've done here shows that Arkansas acted by the book, and we hope that after whatever review they conduct is completed, that the relationship between the correction systems in the two states will be maintained."

Rhonda Sharp, a spokeswoman for the Arkansas Department of Community Correction, said its decision to remove the no-bail warrant was based in part on the fact that Washington authorities had placed Mr. Clemmons on unsupervised parole before his arrests this year.

"Prior to that he was doing fine," Ms. Sharp said.

Ms. Sharp said Arkansas did not have any pending requests to transfer parolees to Washington, and it was not immediately clear what impact Ms. Gregoire's decision would have. Washington is currently supervising 15 people originally paroled in Arkansas.

Ms. Gregoire told King 5 News on Wednesday that she was ordering a review of how the two states deal with parolees because she had "a major question" about "whether Arkansas is living up to its responsibilities." The governor spoke after Washington corrections officials released e-mail messages showing their efforts to persuade Arkansas to require that Mr. Clemmons be kept in jail.

The authorities continued to make arrests in the case on Wednesday and are now holding six people accused of helping Mr. Clemmons flee from the police after the killings. One of the suspects, Darcus Allen, 38, pleaded not guilty on Wednesday to violating the terms of his parole in Arkansas. He has yet to be charged in the Clemmons case.