Church warden jailed for murdering pensioner has conviction quashed
Danny FullbrookBeds, Herts and Bucks
Thames Valley Police
A former church warden jailed for murdering a university lecturer has had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal.
Benjamin Field, 35, was sentenced to a minimum of 36 years in prison for the murder of Peter Farquhar, 69, in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire, in 2015.
On Thursday, senior judges ordered a retrial, saying jurors at Oxford Crown Court had “not been properly directed” over evidence related to Farquhar taking spiked whisky.
However, Lord Justice Edis, sitting with Mr Justice Goose and Mr Justice Butcher, said they would allow the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) to take the “unusual case” to the Supreme Court.
He said Field would remain in prison “for so long as the appeal [to the Supreme Court] is pending”.
In 2019, prosecutors at Field’s trial said he spiked Farquhar’s whisky to make him think he was losing his mind, in order to inherit his house and money.
But Field’s lawyers told the Court of Appeal last month there was “no evidence” Farquhar was “forced or deceived” into taking the whisky or medication before his death.
Jurors in Oxford had been told that Field “suffocated” Farquhar when he was too weak to resist, and left a half-empty bottle of whisky in his room to create the misconception he had drunk himself to death.
Thames Valley Police
Field’s conviction had been referred by the Criminal Cases Review Commission under the exceptional circumstances provision, which allows a new appeal even if there is no new evidence.
Reading a summary of their ruling, the appeal judges said the jurors at trial had “not been properly directed” and the directions given to them on how to reach a verdict were “defective”.
Lord Justice Edis said: “The directions effectively withdrew from the jury the question of whether Mr Farquhar’s decision to drink the whisky had been voluntary.”
Alongside his life sentence, Field was given a concurrent 16-year jail term for admitting fraud and burglary offences in relation to Farquhar and a neighbour – Ann Moore-Martin, 83.
Field, from Olney in Buckinghamshire, had also targeted Moore-Martin, a retired headteacher who he manipulated by writing messages on her mirrors purporting to be from God.
The former church warden admitted fraudulently being in relationships with the two pensioners as part of his plan to get them to change their wills.
He was found not guilty of conspiracy to murder Moore-Martin and an alternative charge of attempted murder. Moore-Martin died of natural causes in May 2017.
Thames Valley Police
Field previously attempted to appeal against his murder conviction in 2021, which he lost.
In this new attempt, his lawyers said the previous Court of Appeal decision wrongly applied the law due to “moral disapproval”.
The CPS opposed the appeal arguing Field was not a mere bystander or spectator of Farquhar’s death.
KC David Perry said: “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.”
In 2023 the case was turned into The Sixth Commandment, a BBC drama starring Timothy Spall, Anne Reid and Eanna Hardwicke.
