A grieving Bahamian family is demanding accountability and a full investigation after a diabetic inmate with chronic pre-existing conditions died less than three months after being ordered back to correctional custody, with relatives claiming prison officials failed to deliver the court-guaranteed medical care they promised to provide.
Thomas Jean-Baptiste, a 40-something former boat captain who had a history of life-threatening blood clots and lived with morbid obesity alongside his chronic diabetes, passed away on October 4 following a two-week stay at Princess Margaret Hospital. His death came just months after the Bahamas Court of Appeal revoked his medical bail in July, ordering him to complete the remainder of his combined sentences for illegal weapons possession charges.
The legal case stretches back to April 2023, when police pulled Jean-Baptiste over during a routine traffic stop and discovered an unlicensed firearm and five rounds of ammunition in his vehicle. He was convicted on those charges in November 2025, and granted medical bail that December to manage his complex health conditions outside of prison walls. His appeal against the length of his custodial sentence reached the Court of Appeal in July this year, where his legal team argued his severe health issues made a continued prison sentence unsafe and unjustified.
During the appeal hearing, Jean-Baptiste’s medical expert, consultant urologist Dr Robin Roberts, issued a stark warning to the court: Jean-Baptiste required lifelong anticoagulant medication to keep his life-threatening conditions under control. Roberts noted that overcrowded, unsanitary prison conditions dramatically increased his risk of developing serious infections, including the often-fatal Fournier’s gangrene, and raised alarms that he faced a high chance of another life-ending pulmonary embolism behind bars.
Despite this warning, the Court of Appeal sided with the assessment of the Bahamas Department of Correctional Services’ in-house physician, Dr Scavella, who testified that the institution was fully capable of managing Jean-Baptiste’s chronic conditions. Scavella further stated that Jean-Baptiste could be transferred to the public Princess Margaret Hospital for specialized care if any medical emergency arose, and recommended specific accommodations including an infirmary bed, access to daily movement, and consistent access to bathing and toilet facilities. The court ultimately ruled that the seriousness of Jean-Baptiste’s weapons offenses outweighed his medical needs, though it noted he could apply for the Prerogative of Mercy if the prison system was later unable to meet his care requirements.
Now, Jean-Baptiste’s sister Alicia Jean Baptiste is speaking out, saying correctional officials completely ignored the court’s requirements and left her brother to suffer and die from actionable medical neglect. “He was sick going back, but he wasn’t sick enough to die,” she told The Tribune in an exclusive interview. When asked if prison staff did everything reasonably possible to protect her brother’s life, she responded plainly: “Absolutely not, they made no efforts, period. The court order did not matter. It did not stand. They took no care, no concern.”
Ms Jean Baptiste laid out a series of damning allegations against the department, saying Jean-Baptiste was supposed to be housed in the prison infirmary per medical recommendations, but instead spent more than a month in the facility’s intake unit before being moved to a general population cell block far from medical care. She claims that cell block had no working air conditioning, suffered frequent prolonged power outages, and that correctional staff failed to consistently administer the expensive medication Jean-Baptiste had purchased himself before returning to custody. One of his daily medications alone cost nearly $300, she noted, a supply he brought with him to prison that staff never properly distributed.
She also detailed consistent complaints from her brother about the poor quality of prison food, saying he often ate barely anything and relied only on meals his relatives sent in for him. His condition began to decline rapidly after he first developed severe leg pain, which was eventually diagnosed as new blood clotting. Ms Jean Baptiste says even after that diagnosis, hospital staff sent him back to prison within 24 hours, despite his unstable condition.
Jean-Baptiste repeatedly told family that prison staff were not checking on him as his health worsened, though the family initially wrote off his comments as general frustration with prison life rather than a cry for emergency medical help. He was eventually rushed back to hospital after his condition collapsed, but correctional officials did not notify his family immediately of the medical emergency.
By the time Jean-Baptiste’s mother traveled to New Providence to visit him, his condition had deteriorated irreversibly. Ms Jean Baptiste says after two separate medical events left him unable to speak and paralyzed on one side of his body, hospital officials discussed discharging him back to prison – but even then, correctional staff raised concerns about moving him to the second-floor infirmary due to his size. The news of a potential return to prison left Jean-Baptiste distraught, his sister says, and he cried at the prospect of going back to the conditions that had already left him dying.
The family began preparing legal action to secure his compassionate release once more, but Jean-Baptiste died before they could file the necessary court documents. “I feel like the neglect began from the courthouse,” Ms Jean Baptiste said. “Everybody know the prison within itself is not a humane place to be. It’s not a clean place to be.”
She added that Jean-Baptiste’s death has left his three children and the entire extended family shattered, remembering him as an outgoing, well-known member of the local community through his work as a boat captain. She is pushing back against the culture of neglect that she says allows poor care for incarcerated people, saying: “They don’t have to provide the bare minimum just because they’re inmates, or be neglectful just because they’re inmates. Why was he being neglected? Why was he not being provided with the medications that he took for himself to stay in good health, as his body depended on those medications every day?”
Ms Jean Baptiste is calling for a full independent investigation into her brother’s treatment and for the officials responsible to be held accountable, though she said the family has not yet made a final decision on whether to pursue civil legal action against the correctional department.