A DRUGS courier caught with 500g of heroin 12 days after being released from a five-year jail sentence for an identical offence has walked free after a judge called his case unique.

Jonathan Hibbs was spared jail after a court heard that he suffered a “catastrophic” heart attack on remand and was being kept alive by a pioneering medical procedure.

The 36-year-old, from North Yorkshire, has no heartbeat and has to have blood pumped around his body by a pump implanted in his chest five months ago.

Teesside Crown Court heard yesterday that he takes medication four times a day and needs access to an electricity supply to recharge the heart pump batteries.

Even after the lifesaving surgery, doctors do not give Hibbs a lengthy life-expectancy.

His barrister, Dan Cordey, said he will soon be put on the heart transplant register.

He said: “He has no heartbeat – he relies solely on that pump for survival. He was one of the first people in the world to be given that implement and is extremely grateful.

“He is somebody who now is extremely ill... he really can’t go out very much.

“He finds his condition frightening and it has affected him mentally as well as physically, so I ask the court to consider whether in this case an exceptional and merciful course can be taken.”

Judge Peter Fox imposed a suspended jail sentence after telling Hibbs: “Were it not for your dire medical condition and limited life expectancy, it would be at least five years’ imprisonment.

“As it is utterly exceptionally, I am going to make a suspended sentence order.”

The court heard that Hibbs, of Burdyke Avenue, Clifton, York, was jailed for five years for heroin possession in 2008 and released on Christmas Eve last year.

Less than a fortnight later, he was stopped in a car on the A19 near Stockton on his way to delivering drugs worth up to £50,000 on behalf of “a big player” to help write off a debt.

Hibbs admitted possessing Class A drugs with intent to supply and was given a 12- month prison sentence, suspended for two years, with a six-month 6pm to 6am electronic tag curfew.

A spokesman for NHS Blood and Transplant said Hibbs’ status as a convicted drug dealer should have no bearing on his place on the transplant waiting list.

He said: “You are on the list because you are seriously ill and that is what the NHS is there for.

“We would not discriminate.”