But unlike other defendants who walked free after their convictions or charges were wiped away, Gonzalez was sent back to prison - for damaging a prison sink while in solitary confinement, according to prison records and his lawyers.
Lake County State's Attorney Mike Nerheim, who took over the office long after Gonzalez was convicted in the abduction and rape of a Waukegan woman, said he agreed to drop those charges after recent DNA tests contradicted the state's 1994 case.
"If words were enough, I'd say I'm sorry, and I am sorry," Nerheim said after the hearing. The apology stood in stark contrast to his predecessor, Michael Waller, who prosecuted several men who were later cleared but he generally remained unapologetic in public.
A judge granted Nerheim's request to void the abduction and rape charges against Gonzalez, but the celebratory mood in the courthouse was muted because he was headed back - at least temporarily - to Dixon Correctional Center in northwestern Illinois.
Gonzalez, of Waukegan, was convicted in the late 1990s of criminal damage to state property in the prison sink incident and has not served his three-year sentence for that crime, according to prison records.
His attorneys said they will ask a judge in Livingston County on Tuesday to allow him to withdraw his guilty plea in the property damage case on the grounds that Gonzalez, who speaks limited English, entered his plea without an interpreter present.
After Monday's hearing, one of Gonzalez's lawyers said he told her: "I feel alive again."
Minutes earlier, deputies had led Gonzalez, shackled at the ankles, into a courtroom crowded with family, friends, attorneys and media. Two other men who were convicted in Lake County and spent years in prison before they were cleared by DNA and freed - Juan Rivera and Bennie Starks - were also present.
Before the hearing started, Gonzalez, 41, in a blue jail outfit, whispered with Barry Scheck, one of his lawyers and the co-director of the Innocence Project in New York. Gonzalez spent most of the hearing looking down at the defense table, sometimes smiling nervously as an interpreter spoke quietly to him in Spanish.
Nerheim appeared alongside Stephen Scheller, the office's supervisor for felony review, who also originally helped prosecute the case. After Judge Victoria Rossetti agreed to vacate the conviction, Gonzalez's lawyer, Vanessa Potkin, let out a celebratory, "Yes!"
Nerheim decided to drop the conviction after recent DNA test results yielded two genetic profiles, neither of which matched Gonzalez's. Nerheim said it was clear this indicated Gonzalez's innocence and suggested two other men, whose identities remain unknown, committed the crime.
Waller, whose office prosecuted Gonzalez, retired in 2012 after 22 years as state's attorney - a tenure marked by a series of cases in which his prosecutors sought to hold men responsible for crimes even after forensic evidence suggested their innocence.
The five men cleared by DNA, including Gonzalez, spent a total of 80 years in prison before they were exonerated.
Waller could not be reached Monday. He once told the Tribune: "Each of the cases really stands on its own."
It is unclear when Gonzalez might be able to regain his freedom.
Another complicating factor is that Gonzalez is a Mexican national whose visa expired after he was arrested, Potkin said. Gonzalez's attorneys are working to make sure he can remain in the country legally if he's freed.
On the night of July 10, 1994, a 35-year-old Waukegan woman opened her door to two men, who dragged her to a car and drove her to another location, where one of the men pulled her into some bushes and raped her, according to court records. She escaped, but the second man found her and assaulted her, the records indicate.
Early the next morning, police stopped a vehicle matching the description of the car the woman gave, court records show.
The victim was summoned to the traffic stop, where she identified Gonzalez, the driver, as her attacker as he was illuminated in the dark by headlights, according to court records.
"He was wearing the same clothes, everything. I recognized him immediately," the victim later testified at Gonzalez's trial.
An officer later testified that the traffic stop happened near both the Lake County sheriff's office and the Waukegan Police Department, which had facilities for lineup identification procedures, but the officer said he didn't have access to the facilities at night.
At trial, prosecutors presented a videotaped statement from Gonzalez in which he acknowledged participating in the assault but said he didn't ejaculate, according to court records.
Gonzalez's alleged accomplice was never charged. In his confession, which he gave after about 13 hours in custody, Gonzalez said he was driving when the man - whose name Gonzalez never learned - asked him for a ride to a bar, according to court records. Gonzalez's confession says he decided instead that they should stop at his girlfriend's sister's apartment. They rang the door buzzer and the victim, whom Gonzalez did not know, came to the door, his confession states.
That was when the other man walked up and proposed that they "take the lady," according to the confession.
DNA tests on semen taken from the victim and her clothing were inconclusive. Despite his confession, Gonzalez presented an alibi at trial, saying he'd been with his girlfriend at the time, court records show.
But Gonzalez was found guilty of sexual assault and kidnapping, court records show. He continued to maintain his innocence, but a judge sentenced him to 55 years in prison, according to court records.
In the early 2000s, additional tests determined that some of the forensic material from the victim matched an unidentified man other than Gonzalez, according to court records. But judges ruled that the new results were not conclusive because Gonzalez said he did not ejaculate and could still could have been one of the two men who participated in the crime.
More recent DNA testing revealed distinct genetic profiles of two men, neither of whom is Gonzalez, Nerheim said.
Gonzalez's lawyers have said the evidence against him was never solid. Witnesses' identifications have been proven fallible, and some experts regard the type of "show-up" procedure by which the victim identified Gonzalez as unreliable. The lawyers said there were discrepancies between the description the victim gave police and Gonzalez's appearance.
His lawyers also have pointed to discrepancies between the victim's account and Gonzalez's confession.
Researchers have found that trauma, lack of sleep and manipulative interrogation techniques are a few factors that can cause the most level-headed people to falsely confess to a crime. In the last 25 years, advancing DNA technology has proven a host of inmates confessed falsely to their crimes.
Gonzalez now joins four other men - Starks and Rivera, along with Jerry Hobbs and James Edwards - cleared of rape or murder in Lake County since 2010. All except Starks had confessed to their alleged crimes. And like Gonzalez, Starks had been identified by his alleged victim as her attacker.
Each man has DNA tests indicating his innocence, but several of them had to fight for years to be exonerated after Waller's office insisted the DNA didn't prove they weren't guilty. The office under Waller developed an unflattering reputation nationally as prosecutors responded to DNA test results that contradicted convictions by insisting on inmates' guilt and suggesting alternate theories that defense lawyers derided as farfetched.
Gonzalez's lawyers voiced unhappiness Monday that, in his case, a comparatively minor charge kept him locked up.
Court records show the Waukegan police officers who took Gonzalez's confession were Artis Yancey and Luis Marquez, both of whom have died. The prosecutors who originally handled the case, according to court records, were Scheller and Christopher Stride, who is now a judge.
Outside court Monday, Scheller said he felt good about the office's handling of Gonzalez's innocence claim, and Nerheim added that Scheller was "instrumental" in the events that led up to the exoneration. Scheller noted that Gonzalez confessed and the victim identified him as one of her rapists. He said prosecutors two decades ago saw it as a "good case."
But Scheller acknowledged Gonzalez's suffering.
"Twenty-one years ...I can't even imagine what Mr. Gonzalez feels," Scheller said.
"The injustice here is just heartbreaking," said Lauren Kaeseberg, another of his attorneys from the Illinois Innocence Project, based at the University of Illinois at Springfield."
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