Matt Cutts wrote an excellent blog post named How google handles hacked sites. This is very interesting to me, since I had a similar situation with a client in the past (see Jennifer Convertibles Web Site Hacked & Delisted In Google.com). Matt documents each step as it happened, here is a abridged timeline:
November 18th - Site hacked November 27th - Google detected spam and hack on site November 27th - Google removed site from index November 27th - Flagged site in Webmaster Central console as spam November 28th - Sent email to several webmaster emails for site, to notify them (attempts failed due to email addresses not being reachable)
We then know the site owner did a reinclusion request, I do not know on which date. We also know, that the site was approved and should be back in the index within 24 hours from this post here.
Very interesting, indeed.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.