A former Buckinghamshire church warden jailed for murdering a university lecturer has had his conviction quashed by the Court of Appeal.

Benjamin Field, 34, was found guilty of murdering 69-year-old Peter Farquhar in Maids Moreton in 2015. He was sentenced to life in prison, to serve a minimum of 36 years.

In a ruling on Thursday, three judges ordered a retrial. The case had been referred to the court by the Criminal Cases Review Commission, under a provision which allows an appeal even if there is no new evidence. 

Prosecutors in the original 2019 trial said Field had driven Farquhar to believe he was losing his mind, as part of a scheme to inherit his house and money, spiking Farquhar’s whisky with tranquiliser drugs to make his death look like an accident or suicide. 

Field’s lawyers told a Court of Appeal hearing in March that there was “no evidence” that Farquhar was “forced or deceived” into taking the whiskey or tranquiliser. 

Judges said the jurors in the trial "had not been properly directed” which “effectively withdrew from the jury the question of whether Mr Farquhar's decision to drink the whisky had been voluntary".

He will remain in prison, as the justices decided the Crown Prosecution Service can take the “unusual case” to the Supreme Court before a retrial. 

Field had admitted three counts of fraud and two counts of burglary, after being in fraudulent relationships with Farquhar and his neighbour Ann Moore-Martin, 83, in an attempt to get them to change their wills. 

The trial heard how the Baptist minister’s son had convinced Moore-Martin that God was speaking to her by writing messages on her bathroom mirror, such as “Pray for Ben... he loves you”.

Field was found not guilty of conspiracy to murder Moore-Martin. She died from natural causes in 2017.