Maids Moreton: Benjamin Field in second bid to overturn murder conviction

A churchwarden jailed for murdering an author in order to inherit his estate has begun a second bid to have his conviction overturned.

Benjamin Field, 31, was jailed for a minimum of 36 years in 2019 for killing 69-year-old Peter Farquhar in Maids Moreton, Buckinghamshire.

The Court of Appeal dismissed a challenge to the conviction last year.

Field is now challenging that decision, with his lawyers arguing that the appeal court's judgment was flawed.

Field, who was from Olney in Bucks, was found guilty of killing Mr Farquhar and his trial heard had driven his victim to think he was losing his mind following a period of gaslighting.

He duped the university lecturer into a relationship in order to get him change his will and make him the main beneficiary, in order to inherit his house and money.

The prosecution at Oxford Crown Court said Field secretly gave Mr Farquhar drugs and spiked his whisky, hoping that his eventual death would look like suicide or an accident.

After Mr Farquhar died in 2015, Field embarked on a relationship with his neighbour, 87-year-old retired headmistress Ann Moore-Martin.

She died of natural causes in May 2017 and Field was accused of plotting to kill her, but was found not guilty.

Field admitted duping both Mr Farquhar and Ms Moore-Martin into fake relationships as part of a plot to get them to change their wills, but denied any involvement in their deaths.

At the Court of Appeal hearing in January 2021, Field's barrister David Jeremy QC argued the murder conviction was "unsafe" as the trial judge misdirected the jury.

Mr Jeremy said the directions given to the jury before it started its deliberations left the defence with "nothing to say" when in fact there was "much that could be said on Field's behalf on the issue of causation".

He said full directions would have explained to jurors the fact that the prosecution "could not prove causation" because there was "no evidence that Mr Farquhar had been forced or tricked" into consuming alcohol and a tranquiliser drug.

At the same hearing, Oliver Saxby QC, who represented the Crown Prosecution Service, said the drugs, alcohol and "smothering" were all part of a Field's plan.

The Court of Appeal upheld Field's conviction and he was refused permission to take his case to the Supreme Court.

At the latest appeal court hearing in London this week, Mr Jeremy argued the previous panel was unable to find that Mr Farquhar's act of drinking the whisky "was not autonomous", which would have justified the trial judge's directions.

He said: "Unable to make that finding, the court ought to have allowed the appeal, but instead it dismissed it."

A ruling will be made at a later date.

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