Court finds jury misdirected on causation and victim autonomy in complex homicide case
The Court of Appeal has quashed the murder conviction of Benjamin Field, finding that fundamental errors in the trial judge’s directions on causation rendered the verdict unsafe.
In Benjamin Luke Field v R, the court reconsidered Field’s 2019 conviction for the murder of Peter Farquhar, a retired teacher found dead in October 2015. The case returned to the court following a referral by the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), which identified concerns about how the jury had been directed on causation.
The prosecution had alleged that Field had manipulated Mr Farquhar into consuming alcohol and the sedative Dalmane, intending to cause his death while disguising it as an alcohol-related fatality. The trial judge directed the jury that Field could be liable even if Mr Farquhar voluntarily consumed the alcohol, provided he was unaware of Field’s intention to kill.
Allowing the appeal, the Court of Appeal held that this approach was inconsistent with established authority, particularly R v Kennedy (No 2), which confirms that a “free, deliberate and informed” act by a victim can break the chain of causation. The court rejected the earlier appellate reasoning that a defendant’s undisclosed intention could, by itself, negate the voluntariness of the victim’s actions.
Lord Justice Edis, giving the leading judgment, concluded that there was no evidential basis for treating Mr Farquhar’s decision to drink alcohol as anything other than voluntary. Crucially, the jury had not been directed to determine whether his actions were “free, deliberate and informed,” nor whether any deception by Field causally influenced that decision.
The court further identified serious deficiencies in the structure of the jury directions. The use of the phrase “and/or” when describing possible causes of death, alcohol, Dalmane, or smothering, risked allowing conviction without clarity as to the actual cause. In particular, the jury could have convicted on the basis of smothering despite there being no clear pathological evidence to support it.
Additionally, the jury was not properly directed to consider whether the ingestion of Dalmane was voluntary or covertly administered, an issue central to determining causation. The court concluded that these errors, taken together, undermined the safety of the conviction. It therefore quashed the murder conviction and ordered a retrial.
Significantly, the court also certified a point of law of general public importance concerning the scope of causation in cases involving deception and victim autonomy, granting leave for an appeal to the Supreme Court. The decision is expected to have far-reaching implications for homicide law, particularly in cases where defendants are alleged to have influenced, rather than directly caused, a victim’s fatal actions.