Church warden serving life for murder of university lecturer has conviction quashed

A former church warden who was jailed for life for the murder of a university lecturer has had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Benjamin Field had been accused of seducing, defrauding and trying to drive 69-year-old Peter Farquhar to suicide. Farquhar was found dead in his home in the village of Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire, in October 2015.

Field was jailed for at least 36 years in 2019.

An inquest concluded that Mr Farquhar's death was alcohol-related, with police not treating it as murder until March 2017.

At the murder trial at Oxford Crown Court in 2019, prosecutors claimed Field had driven Mr Farquhar to believe he was losing his mind to inherit his house and money, lacing his food and whisky with tranquilliser drugs to confuse him in the hope that his eventual death would look like suicide or an accident.

Field, the son of a Baptist minister, was a student when he met Mr Farquhar in April 2011 and realised that the university lecturer was conflicted about his homosexuality. The pair eventually started a relationship and got engaged, the trial heard.

Before his murder trial, Field admitted two counts of burglary and three of fraud after fraudulently being in relationships with both Mr Farquhar and his neighbour, fellow pensioner Ann Moore-Martin, as part of a plan to get them to change their wills. Field was cleared of conspiring or attempting to murder Miss Moore-Martin.

After Mr Farquhar's death, Field inherited half his home and bought a flat in Towcester, which he was forced to sell in 2023 to pay compensation to the families of Mr Farquhar and Ms Moore-Martin, who died from natural causes in May 2017.

The Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Mr Field's conviction to the Court of Appeal last year.

Field's lawyer argued at a hearing in March that there was "no evidence" that Mr Farquhar was "forced or deceived" into taking the whisky or medication.

In a ruling on Thursday, three senior judges quashed Field's conviction and ordered a retrial, saying 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 fact that the appellant secretly intended that Mr Farquhar should die did not change the act or, in law, mean that Mr Farquhar's decision to drink whisky was not free, deliberate and informed.

"There was no evidence that the appellant had 'administered' the alcohol."

He continued: "The directions effectively withdrew from the jury the question of whether Mr Farquhar's decision to drink the whisky had been voluntary."

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The judge said that the Crown Prosecution Service should take the "unusual case" to the Supreme Court before any retrial.

Field will remain in prison "for so long as the appeal [to the Supreme Court] is pending", Lord Justice Edis said.

Alongside the life sentence for Mr Farquhar's murder, Field was handed a concurrent 16-year jail sentence for fraud and burglary offences.

The case was the topic of a BBC drama, called The Sixth Commandment, starring Timothy Spall and Eanna Hardwicke.

(c) Sky News 2026: Church warden serving life for murder of university lecturer has conviction quashed