Eu atualizei recentemente minha versão do Spring para o 3.2.0 do 3.1.2. Eu acho que as propriedades JSON como wrap root element, evitam que valores nulos definidos no ObjectMapper não funcionem mais.

Aqui está o trecho de código

<mvc:annotation-driven content-negotiation-manager="contentNegotiationManager" /> 
    <bean id="contentNegotiationManager" class="org.springframework.web.accept.ContentNegotiationManagerFactoryBean">
    <property name="favorPathExtension" value="true" />
    <property name="ignoreAcceptHeader" value="false" /> 
    <property name="mediaTypes" >
        <value>
            json=application/json
            xml=application/xml
        </value>
    </property>
</bean>

e o conversor JSON

<bean class="org.springframework.http.converter.json.MappingJacksonHttpMessageConverter">
   <property name="objectMapper" ref="customJacksonObjectMapper"/>  
   <property name="supportedMediaTypes" value="application/json"/>
</bean>

Código do mapeador de objetos

public class CustomJacksonObjectMapper extends ObjectMapper {

@SuppressWarnings("deprecation")
public CustomJacksonObjectMapper() {
    super();
    final AnnotationIntrospector introspector = new JaxbAnnotationIntrospector();

    this.configure(org.codehaus.jackson.map.DeserializationConfig.Feature.UNWRAP_ROOT_VALUE, true);
    this.configure(org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.Feature.WRAP_ROOT_VALUE, true);

    this.configure(org.codehaus.jackson.map.SerializationConfig.Feature.WRITE_NULL_PROPERTIES, false);

    this.setDeserializationConfig(this.getDeserializationConfig().withAnnotationIntrospector(introspector));
    this.setSerializationConfig(this.getSerializationConfig().withAnnotationIntrospector(introspector));

   }
}

Versão de Jackson

<dependency>
        <groupId>org.codehaus.jackson</groupId>
        <artifactId>jackson-xc</artifactId>
        <version>1.9.7</version>
    </dependency>

Qual poderia ser o problema? Quaisquer ponteiros são apreciados.