Abstract: The application of the procedure of excluding illegal evidence in the second criminal trial has its special features. By examining the criminal cases heard by the People's Court in C City of S Province, we found some problems in the current judicial practice:the legal provisions are ignored in initiating the procedure, and the exercise of judges' power exceeds the limit; the low rate of pre-trial meetings caused ineffectiveness in illegal evidence exclusion; and the procedure is not strictly carried out after initiation and the investigation is simplified. These problems are mainly the results of the misunderstanding of the three parties involved in the criminal trial about the illegal evidence exclusion procedures in the second criminal trial, and about the functions of the pre-trial meeting in the second criminal trial, which leads to inconsistence in practice. In order to solve the above problems, the initiation criteria of the illegal evidence exclusion procedure should be clearly defined; the role of the pre-trial meetings in excluding illegal evidence in the second criminal trial should be fully utilized in the conduct of the procedure; the exclusion procedure should be operated with consideration of its special attributes and different situations.

Key words: second criminal trial, type of evidence, illegal evidence, illegal evidence exclusion procedure, pre-trial meeting