He had one film role to his name and 109 convictions on his record. When Labour’s early release scheme let him out of HMP Durham in September 2024, he went straight back to the woman he had been jailed for attacking. She died before the case could be tried. He died in April 2026.
A photographer was waiting outside HMP Durham on the morning of September 10, 2024, when Jason Hoganson walked out and raised his thumb. The picture ran in papers across Britain by that afternoon. Within twenty-four hours he was back in a police cell, arrested for going to his former partner’s flat and assaulting her, the same woman a court had jailed him for attacking nine months earlier.
That was how most people first heard the name. What the photograph did not show was that the man holding his thumb up at the prison gates had once been a teenage actor with a lead role in a British film, and that the woman he returned to would be dead within seven weeks.
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Who Was Jason Hoganson?
Hoganson came from Wallsend in Newcastle and was born around 1970. He was a pupil at Redewood school when the producers of a film being shot in London phoned his drama teacher looking for a Geordie teenager with no acting background. He was 16. He won the part after being put up against more than a hundred other young people.
Speaking to a local reporter at the time, he said:
“I’m very pleased with the film. It’s a low-budget picture, really down to earth and true to life. I know acting is a difficult profession to break into but acting and writing are what I have always wanted to do.”
His IMDB page carries a single credit. He never appeared in another film.
The 1987 Film That Made His Name
The film was Empire State, directed by Ron Peck and shot in London’s Docklands while the area was in the early stages of its Thatcher-era redevelopment. Hoganson played Pete, a Geordie drifter who turns up in the capital and gets pulled into the violence around a nightclub being run as a front for organised crime.
Several headlines years later called him a Hollywood actor. The film was British. The only Hollywood presence was Martin Landau, cast as a visiting American investor. Ray McAnally and Cathryn Harrison took the other lead roles.
| Director | Ron Peck |
| Released | 1987 |
| Hoganson’s role | Pete, a Geordie drifter |
| Lead cast | Martin Landau, Ray McAnally, Cathryn Harrison |
| Also featured | Sadie Frost, Michelle Collins, Perry Fenwick, Jamie Foreman |
| Soundtrack | New Order, Jimmy Somerville, Yello |
| First UK broadcast | Channel 4, October 1989 |
Sadie Frost, Michelle Collins, Perry Fenwick, and Jamie Foreman were all billed below him, and all four went on to long careers in British television and film. When Channel 4 first aired the picture in October 1989, it drew a run of viewer complaints over the language and violence.
What Happened After Empire State?
The acting work stopped there. His defence lawyer, Ian Crook, later told Newcastle Crown Court that Hoganson had struggled in the spotlight after the film and, in Crook’s words, “turned to drink and drugs and that led to a downward spiral.” Almost nothing about the years between 1987 and 2024 survives in the public record.
He had five children by three different women, and at some point cut contact with them. He described the decision himself in court:
“The children were only young, and I decided it was best for them that I didn’t see them anymore.”
From 2002, according to court reporting by NCJ Media, he moved through a run of hostels and temporary housing, picking up evictions along the way. By the time he stood up to plead guilty in the summer of 2024, his record held 109 convictions.
The Attack on Rachel Usher
On December 11, 2023, Hoganson approached his former partner, Rachel Usher, in Newcastle. A restraining order forbidding any contact with her was already in force.
A doorbell camera filmed what happened. Prosecutor Amy Levitt described the footage to Newcastle Crown Court:
“Footage shows the defendant assaulting the complainant. He slaps her to the face and she walks away. He walks after her. There are further hits and a push, where she falls to the floor. The assault continues while she’s lying on the floor.”
While held on remand at HMP Durham, he sent Usher two letters, one in August 2024 and another on September 3, each one a breach of the order still hanging over him. In court that August he admitted assault by beating and breaching the restraining order. Judge Tim Gittins gave him 18 months, much of which he had already served on remand.
Freed Under SDS40, Back in Custody by Morning
His release on September 10, 2024 came under SDS40, the early release scheme Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood had set out that July to relieve overcrowding in prisons across England and Wales. The scheme cut the point of automatic release for eligible prisoners from half their sentence to 40 per cent, and the government expected to free several thousand people across that autumn.
The day after he walked out, Hoganson went to Usher’s flat in Newcastle’s West End and assaulted her again. Police arrested him the same day on two counts of breaching the restraining order and one of assault. He appeared at North Tyneside Magistrates’ Court on September 12, where he was first remanded in custody. A later hearing released him on conditional bail, which he then broke, and Northumbria Police confirmed he had evaded officers for a time before being found.
Former Justice Secretary Alex Chalk told LBC the scheme had not excluded every domestic abuse offender, contradicting the impression ministers had given. A man who assaulted his partner, Chalk said, could still qualify for early release as long as his sentence came in under four years.
Rachel Usher’s Death and the Collapse of the Case
Hoganson was due to stand trial at South Shields Magistrates’ Court on October 30, 2024. Rachel Usher died that same morning.
Prosecutors learned of her death on the day the hearing was meant to go ahead and said they were still prepared to press on with the case. They obtained an interim death certificate, and the matter was relisted at Newcastle Magistrates’ Court that December, where prosecutor Jonathan Stirland confirmed the certificate had been handed to the court and the defence, according to reporting by NationalWorld.
The following August, a Newcastle court threw out the charges brought after his rearrest. Prosecutors had not carried out the assessments required before relying on the account of a witness who was no longer alive to give evidence. His earlier conviction for the December 2023 assault was unaffected and stayed on his record. The cause of Usher’s death has never been made public.
When Did Jason Hoganson Die?
He died on April 4, 2026, in Newcastle, at the age of 55. The funeral directors RW Barrett and Son announced the death on April 14 and called it unexpected. No cause was given. His funeral took place on April 28 at West Road Crematorium, and he was survived by his five children.
The Name That Stayed in the Background
For a stretch of 2024 and 2025, Hoganson’s name turned up across the national press: the early release poster case, the old film role, the 109 convictions, the photograph at the prison gates. Rachel Usher’s name surfaced three times, and never as the subject of a story. She was the victim in an assault, a name on a restraining order, and a woman who had died before her case was heard.
Yet she sat at the heart of every part of it. She was the one he was jailed for attacking, the one he wrote to from his cell, the one he went back to the day he got out, and the reason the second case fell apart once she was gone. Almost everything written in this period was written about the man who attacked her. Her own account never made it into print.
