I am using a combination of Ghostscript and iText to do some basic PDF manipulations.

My process is the following:

1. The input PDF (can be any variety of PDF) goes into Ghostscript for distillation to remove hidden layers and PDF 1.5+ features.  Here's the command I'm using for this testcase:
gs -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile='cyan-20-box.ai.distilled.pdf' -c '.setpdfwrite' -f 'cyan-20-box.ai'

2. Import the Ghostscript-distilled PDF with iText and write a new PDF from that page.  See the included Java code (it's pretty short and nothing special is being done).

3. Render the iText-generated PDF with Ghostscript.
gs -sDEVICE=nullpage -f cyan-20-box.ai.distilled.pdf.itext.1275078045895.pdf

This works okay most of the time but newer Illustrator PDF-compatible files with transparency seem to be problematic.  At step 3, Ghostscript fails with the following error:

GPL Ghostscript 8.71 (2010-02-10)
Copyright (C) 2010 Artifex Software, Inc.  All rights reserved.
This software comes with NO WARRANTY: see the file PUBLIC for details.
Processing pages 1 through 1.
Page 1
Error: /rangecheck in --.execform1--
Operand stack:
   --dict:6/15(L)--   1   10   3   13
Execution stack:
   %interp_exit   .runexec2   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   2   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   1878   1   3   %oparray_pop   1877   1   3   %oparray_pop   1861   1   3   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   2   1   1   --nostringval--   %for_pos_int_continue   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   --nostringval--   %array_continue   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   %loop_continue   --nostringval--   114   --nostringval--   1826   4   11   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   1825   4   11   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   (gstatetype)   --dict:0/0(L)--   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   --nostringval--   %loop_continue   --nostringval--   581   --nostringval--   1826   6   14   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   false   1   %stopped_push   1825   6   14   %oparray_pop   --nostringval--   --nostringval--
Dictionary stack:
   --dict:1151/1684(ro)(G)--   --dict:1/20(G)--   --dict:75/200(L)--   --dict:75/200(L)--   --dict:108/127(ro)(G)--   --dict:288/300(ro)(G)--   --dict:22/25(L)--   --dict:6/8(L)--   --dict:21/40(L)--   --dict:1/1(ro)(G)--   --dict:1/1(ro)(G)--   --dict:1/1(ro)(G)--   --dict:4/5(L)--   --dict:1/1(ro)(G)--   --dict:4/5(L)--   --dict:1/1(ro)(G)--
Current allocation mode is local
Last OS error: 2
GPL Ghostscript 8.71: Unrecoverable error, exit code 1


I've checked the iText-generated file that goes into Ghostscript with Acrobat Pro 9.3 Preflight and it validates fine and prints fine so I think this is a Ghostscript issue.
Ghostscript has no problems rendering the initial Ghostscript-distilled file (cyan-20-box.ai.distilled.pdf).