A DRUG trafficker caught carrying heroin only days after being freed from prison has been spared a return to jail – because he has no heartbeat.

Jonathan Hibbs, 36, has become one of the first people in the world to receive pioneering heart pump treatment, after he suffered a “catastrophic” heart attack while being held on remand – and a judge has now shown mercy because of his health needs.

Hibbs, of Clifton, in York, was caught on the A19 with half a kilogram of heroin in his car, only 12 days after being released from a five-year sentence for an identical offence.

Judge Peter Fox, QC, said that in normal circumstances, he would have jailed Hibbs for at least five years. But he showed mercy after hearing of Hibbs’s amazing medical requirements.

Hibbs, formerly of Tang Hall and Lawrence Street in York, and Snaith near Selby, is only alive because he had a heart pump implanted in his chest five months ago.

He takes medication four times a day, needs ready access to an electricity supply to recharge the heart pump’s batteries and has a reduced life-expectancy – but is soon to go on the waiting list for a heart transplant.

At Teesside Crown Court yesterday, Judge Fox told him: “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.”

He said his decision was “an act of mercy” by the court but warned Hibbs: “If the material put forward on your behalf has misled, and you are more able than it would appear and get up to this sort of thing again, you can’t expect there to be a repetition of the view I take on this unique occasion.”

Hibbs’s barrister, Dan Cordey, told the court: “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.

“Clearly, in ordinary circumstances there would be very little I could say on behalf of Mr Hibbs today… 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.”

The court heard that Hibbs was jailed for five years for heroin possession in 2008 and was released from his sentence on Christmas Eve last year.

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

Hibbs pleaded guilty to 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’s 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’s what the NHS is there for.

“We would not discriminate.”