This technique can be easily abused, and should be used with care. It's mainly used to replace nested if structures.

Multiple return statements seem to work well for "guard code" at the beginning of a method, in which the main body of the method is executed only if certain conditions are satisfied.

Example

Here, equals has multiple return statements, since a successful test implies that further comparison is redundant. The alternative is to use multiple if statements, which some would find less legible.

import java.math.BigDecimal;
import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.util.List;
import java.util.Objects;

public final class Automobile {

  @Override public boolean equals(Object aThat) {
    if (this == aThat) return true;
    if (!(aThat instanceof Automobile)) return false;
    Automobile that = (Automobile)aThat;
    for(int i = 0; i < this.getSigFields().length; ++i){
      if (!Objects.equals(this.getSigFields()[i], that.getSigFields()[i])){
        return false;
      }
    }
    return true;
  }
  
  @Override public int hashCode() {
    return Objects.hash(getSigFields());
  }

  //..elided

  // PRIVATE

  private String name;
  private Integer numDoors;
  private List<String> options;
  private BigDecimal gasMileage;
  private String color;
  private List<LocalDate> maintenanceChecks;
  
  private Object[] getSigFields(){
    Object[] result = {
      name, numDoors, options, gasMileage, color, maintenanceChecks 
    };
    return result;
  }  
}