Benjamin Field, a former churchwarden who was jailed for life in 2019 for the murder of university lecturer Peter Farquhar, has had his conviction quashed at the Court of Appeal.
The high-profile case gripped the nation and later inspired the BBC TV series The Sixth Commandment, starring Timothy Spall.
Farquhar, 69, was found dead in his home in the Buckinghamshire village of Maids Moreton in October 2015, with a bottle of whisky beside him.
A post-mortem examination later put his death down to “acute alcohol toxicity”.
Field, 35, was accused of giving Farquhar the alcohol and/or sleeping pills called Dalmane so that he suffered what appeared to be an "alcoholic's death", leaving Field to inherit his fortune.
He was convicted at Oxford Crown Court in August 2019 and jailed for life, with a minimum of 36 years to serve behind bars before he could apply for parole.
Field admitted he was a "snake talker" who had duped Farquhar into a fake relationship to get him to change his will, but denied killing him.
The case was referred to the Court of Appeal by the Criminal Cases Review Commission in 2025.
Field’s lawyers told a hearing in March that there was “no evidence” that Farquhar was “forced or deceived” into taking the whisky or medication.
David Jeremy KC, for Field, told the hearing that his client would have had to have caused Farquhar to ingest the whisky or medication, as well as it being "less than fully voluntary", to have caused the death.
He said that Farquhar "knew what he was being given and knew who he was being given it by", and that the situation was akin to "causing him to drive his car by handing him his car keys".
The Crown Prosecution Service opposed the appeal, with KC David Perry claiming Field was "not a mere bystander or a mere spectator of Farquhar's death at his own hands".
"He was, at all times, playing his part in causing the death both as a matter of common sense and as a matter of law," the barrister said.
In a ruling on Thursday, three senior judges quashed the conviction and ordered a retrial.
Reading a summary of their ruling, Lord Justice Edis, sitting with Mr Justice Goose and Mr Justice Butcher, said that the jurors at trial had “not been properly directed” and the directions given to them on how to reach a verdict were “defective”.
He said: “The directions effectively withdrew from the jury the question of whether Mr Farquhar’s decision to drink the whisky had been voluntary.”
Lord Justice Edis also said the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) could take the “unusual case” to the Supreme Court before any retrial.
The judge added that Field will remain in prison “for so long as the appeal (to the Supreme Court) is pending”.
