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Winning back his name was hardest of all. Removing every trace of the taint would be impossible. Stories persist on the Internet. Once, a date told him she had Googled him, and he had to explain.

Leiderman, one of his defense lawyers, thought it was not enough that the government dropped charges. He wanted the criminal justice system to recognize Gonzalez's innocence affirmatively.

There is such a thing as a declaration of factual innocence, he explained to Gonzalez. A judge can grant it. It is exceedingly rare — so rare that many cops and lawyers go a career without seeing one. It means not just that prosecutors couldn't make a case against you, but that you didn't do the crime.

The case remained on the docket of Ventura County Superior Court Judge Patricia Murphy, who had earlier ordered Gonzalez held without bail. Leiderman petitioned the judge, trying not to get his client's hopes up. He laid out the case, pointing out the holes in West's story and the numerous alibi witnesses.

Prosecutors did not want Gonzalez declared innocent. They knew a jury wouldn't convict him but said they couldn't be positive of his innocence. James Ellison, Ventura County's chief assistant district attorney, later explained their reasoning: The attack West described was "improbable, but it wasn't physically impossible."

In January 2009, nearly a year after Gonzalez's arrest, Leiderman called him excitedly: The judge had sided with them. Gonzalez was soon holding a certified copy of the judge's order declaring him factually innocent.

He drove to the bank and put it in a safe-deposit box. He figured he would need it if he wanted to continue in banking, where the blot on his record would otherwise scare off future employers. It would help in his fight to win custody of his son. But it hardly made him whole. It made it even more illogical, in his view, that West was free.