RUN IT AGAIN

Court Overturns Church Warden’s Murder Conviction

Benjamin Field will face a retrial after three judges ruled his conviction for killing a university lecturer represented a “defective” verdict.

A court has overturned a former church warden’s conviction for killing a university lecturer. Benjamin Field, who in 2019 was sentenced to a minimum of 36 years for the 2015 murder of 69-year-old Peter Farquhar in Buckinghamshire, U.K., will now face a retrial. Three judges ruled on appeal Thursday that directions given to jurors at the original trial had been “defective.” The justices took issue with the fact that prosecutors told jurors that Field, as part of a plot to inherit the man’s wealth, had laced Farquhar’s whiskey to persuade him he was losing his mind. The appeal court concluded that directions given to jurors “effectively withdrew from the jury the question of whether Mr Farquhar’s decision to drink the whiskey had been voluntary.” Prosecutors have been granted permission to escalate the case to the Supreme Court before any new proceedings, with judges describing it as an “unusual case.” Field, who admitted to fraudulent relationships with pensioners to get them to change their wills, will remain in prison pending the outcome of that appeal.