Never turn your back on a jury, especially on a Friday afternoon.

Anyone who has spent a lot of time in trial courts knows juries often deliver verdicts on Friday afternoons. The prevailing wisdom is that jurors who have already sacrificed days or weeks away from their normal lives don’t want to return to court the following Monday. Even though it’s impossible to predict when a verdict will come in, Friday after lunch seems like a good bet.

That was true last week, when a 12-member jury in New London convicted Mozzelle Brown of the murder of science writer Eugene Mallove. The jury sent out a note just before 4 p.m. that it had a verdict.

It was true last month, when a jury in federal court in New Haven convicted former Gov. John G. Rowland of corruption shortly after 2:30 on a Friday.

A quick search of the The Day archives turned up a few more examples of Friday verdicts. On a Friday in December 2013, a New London jury delivered a not-guilty verdict in the case of a Massachusetts man accused of stabbing a man in the back eight times during a dispute at a Lebanon horse farm. On May 31, 2013, a jury came back on a Friday with a guilty verdict in the case of Joane Skok, a career con woman who had stolen the life savings of an elderly woman she had befriended.

Juries have also been known to decide on Fridays that they simply can’t reach a verdict. On a Friday in 2011, a New London jury informed Judge Arthur C. Hadden it was unable to reach a verdict in the case of a man charged with killing package store owner Jared Silva. Faced with being tried a second time, the accused, Gary Clarke, pleaded guilty, on a Wednesday, to the lesser charge of manslaughter.