In Turner et al. v. New York, 1966, the petitioners were convicted in a state court for murder and sentenced to death based on circumstantial evidence that was largely uncorroborated by any direct testimony linking them to the crime scene or victim. The Supreme Court of the United States granted certiorari due to concerns about potential violations of due process rights under the Fourteenth Amendment. However, after reviewing all relevant materials and hearing arguments from both sides, it found no constitutional error in how lower courts had handled this case. Therefore, it affirmed their convictions and sentences without issuing an opinion explaining its reasoning – a procedure known as summary affirmance which is typically used when legal issues presented are considered relatively straightforward or already settled by existing precedents.

In the dissenting opinion for Turner et al. v. New York, 1966, it was argued that the majority's decision to uphold a conviction based on evidence obtained through an illegal search and seizure violated the Fourth Amendment rights of the defendants. The dissenting justices believed that allowing such evidence to be used in court would undermine citizens' constitutional protections against unreasonable searches and seizures by law enforcement officers. They contended that this ruling could potentially encourage police misconduct by removing any deterrent effect provided by excluding illegally obtained evidence from trials. Furthermore, they expressed concerns about maintaining public trust in the justice system if courts were seen as complicit in condoning or ignoring violations of individuals' constitutional rights.