The Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) has referred the 2019 murder conviction of Benjamin Field to the Court of Appeal.
Field was convicted at Oxford Crown Court in August 2019 of the murder of Peter Farquhar, who was found dead at his home in October 2015. Field was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of 36 years. His conviction was upheld by the Court of Appeal in March 2021, and a further application to reopen the appeal was refused in 2022.
The CCRC referral centres on the issue of causation, a legal point that was considered at trial and on appeal, but about which further argument has since been developed. The case raises the question of whether deceptive conduct can amount to murder in circumstances where the deception relates not to the nature of an act, but to the intention with which it was carried out.
The application to the CCRC suggested that the trial judge’s directions on causation could be questioned, drawing comparisons with how the law treats consent obtained by deception in sexual offence cases. It also submitted that there may be exceptional circumstances that justify the court reconsidering the causation issue, which could affect the safety of the conviction.
The CCRC has determined that there is sufficient merit in the submissions to warrant referral, concluding that there is a real possibility that the Court of Appeal may find the conviction unsafe.
David Jeremy KC of QEB Hollis Whiteman represents Benjamin Field in the Court of Appeal proceedings.
The Criminal Cases Review Commission’s press release can be found here.
David Jeremy KC