Church warden murder conviction quashed as Court of Appeal orders retrial

The Court of Appeal has overturned the murder conviction of Benjamin Field, the previous church warden jailed in 2019 for the death of university lecturer Peter Farquhar, in a major ruling that reopens one in all the UK’s most complex criminal cases.

Field, 34, had been serving a life sentence with a minimum term of 36 years after being found guilty of murdering Mr Farquhar, 69, at his home in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire, in October 2015. 

Prosecutors at the unique trial alleged that Field manipulated and deceived Mr Farquhar – whom he had entered right into a relationship with – before spiking his food and whisky with tranquillisers in a bid to inherit his house and wealth.

However, senior judges on the Court of Appeal ruled that the jury within the 2019 trial had not been properly directed, making the conviction unsafe. A retrial has now been ordered.

Delivering the judgment, Lord Justice Edis said the instructions given to jurors were “defective”, particularly in how they addressed the important thing issue of whether Mr Farquhar had voluntarily consumed alcohol. He said the directions “effectively withdrew from the jury the query” of whether the lecturer’s drinking had been a voluntary act.

This issue formed a central plank of Field’s appeal. His legal team argued there was no evidence that Mr Farquhar had been forced or deceived into consuming alcohol or medication prior to his death.

The case had been referred back to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission under exceptional circumstances provisions, which permit appeals even within the absence of latest evidence. Judges also indicated that the Crown Prosecution Service may take the bizarre step of referring the case to the Supreme Court before any retrial proceeds.

Field will remain in custody while any further legal motion is taken into account.

The original trial heard how Field, the son of a Baptist minister, met Mr Farquhar in 2011 while a student and commenced a relationship with him, allegedly exploiting the older man’s personal vulnerabilities. After Mr Farquhar’s death, Field inherited a part of his estate.

Field also admitted to defrauding Mr Farquhar’s neighbour, Ann Moore-Martin, an 83-year-old retired headteacher. He created messages he claimed were from God as a part of a scheme to influence her to alter her will in his favour. He was convicted of fraud in relation to each victims but cleared of attempting to murder Ms Moore-Martin.

An earlier inquest concluded that Mr Farquhar’s death was alcohol-related, and it was not initially treated as suspicious by police. Detectives only began investigating it as a possible murder in 2017, nearly two years after his death.

With the conviction now quashed, the case is ready to return to court, where a latest jury could also be asked to reconsider the evidence surrounding Mr Farquhar’s death.