R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-25-15
An execution, original, alias, or pluries, may issue against the body of a defendant not exempt from arrest in an action which shall have been brought upon a penal statute, or in an action sounding in tort in which the title to real estate was not in dispute, or against bail in criminal cases, or whenever the defendant shall have been arrested and held to bail upon a writ of arrest or writ of mesne process therein, or whenever it shall be made to appear to the court which rendered the judgment in the action, or to any justice thereof, that the defendant is about to leave the state without leaving therein sufficient real or personal estate to satisfy the judgment, or that the defendant has been guilty of fraud in fact involving moral turpitude or intentional wrong either in contracting the debt for the recovery of which the judgment was rendered or in the concealment, detention or disposition of his or her property; provided, however, that no execution, original, alias or pluries, shall issue against the body of a defendant unless so ordered by a justice of the superior court or a justice of a district court upon the written ex parte motion of a party named in the action.
R.I. Gen. Laws § 9-25-15