Man jailed for 37 years for murdering lecturer has conviction quashed

A church warden who was jailed for life for murdering a lecturer has had his conviction quashed at the Court of Appeal.

Benjamin Field, 28, was found guilty in August 2019 of the murder of Peter Farquhar, 69, in the village of Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire

The prosecution in Field’s trial said he had secretly given the pensioner tranquiliser drugs and spiked his whisky as part of a plot to kill him and inherit his house and money.

However, Field’s lawyers told a Court of Appeal hearing in March that there was ‘no evidence’ Mr Farquhar was ‘forced or deceived’ into taking the whisky or medication.

In a ruling on Thursday, three senior judges quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial.

Lord Justice Edis, sitting with Mr Justice Goose and Mr Justice Butcher, said that jurors had ‘not been properly directed’ and were given ‘defective’ directions on how to reach a verdict.

Lord Edis added: ‘The directions effectively withdrew from the jury the question of whether Mr Farquhar’s decision to drink the whisky had been voluntary.’

The judges will allow the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to take the ‘unusual case’ to the Supreme Court before any retrial takes place.

Field, who will remain in prison while the Supreme Court appeal case is pending, was accused of befriending the dedicated churchgoer Mr Farquhar and persuading his target to add him to his will.

The church warden allegedly then plied the retired teacher with drugs and whisky in the hopes that his eventual death would look like an accident.

He was convicted by a jury at Oxford Crown Court of Mr Farquhar’s murder but he was acquitted of the attempted murder of Mr Farquhar’s close neighbour Ann Moore-Martin.

The Baptist minister’s son had pleaded guilty to defrauding Mr Farquhar of £160,000 from his will and of cheating Ms Moore-Martin of £4,000 to buy a car and £27,000 for a dialysis machine.

Jurors heard Field underwent a ‘betrothal’ ceremony with gay Mr Farquhar while also having a string of girlfriends and a relationship with Miss Moore-Martin.

Field denied murdering Mr Farquhar during the trial, claiming he could have died from taking his usual dose of flurazepam and drinking whisky.

‘This murder never happened. No-one killed anyone,’ he told jurors.

The case was later turned into a BBC drama, The Sixth Commandment, starring Timothy Spall and Eanna Hardwicke.

Field lost an attempted appeal against his conviction in 2021.

However at a hearing last month, his lawyer David Jeremy KC said that Mr Farquhar ‘knew what he was being given and knew who he was being given it by’, and that the situation was akin to ‘causing him to drive his car by handing him his car keys’.

The CPS opposed the appeal, arguing Field was ‘not a mere bystander or a mere spectator of Mr Farquhar’s death at his own hands’.

Their barrister KC David Perry added: ‘He was, at all times, playing his part in causing the death both as a matter of common sense and as a matter of law.’

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