ELYRIA — There was a trial in Elyria Municipal Court on Friday, and Sherlock Holmes and his faithful sidekick Dr. Watson were witnesses for the prosecution.

With witnesses like that, it’s no wonder that Dr. Grimesby Roylott was convicted of trying to use a trained venomous snake to murder his stepdaughter.

The jury returned with a guilty verdict within minutes in the mock trial scenario based on the Arthur Conan Doyle story “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.”

In the story, a young woman, Helen, played Friday by Rebecca Plow, 12, asks for help from the famous detective, played by Brett Litzler, 12, after her ill-tempered stepfather moves her into the same room where her sister died under mysterious circumstances.

The case was resolved after Holmes ran into the girl’s room and used his cane to scare away the snake, which was slithering toward Helen.

The trial before Elyria Municipal Judge Lisa Locke Graves was just one of a number of mock cases involving dozens of gifted students from around the county.

Other books used as sources for mock trials on Friday were “The Giver,” “The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle,” “Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry” and “Animal Farm,” according to Mary Lou Kaminski, gifted and talented supervisor of the Lorain County Educational Service Center.

But seeing as how the mock trial was taking place in a real courtroom, real life took precedence. The mock trial involving the Sherlock Holmes story was delayed for about a half hour as Locke Graves had to handle some cases on her docket.

Locke Graves said the kids saw some real slices of life, including a man who disobeyed an order prohibiting him from contacting a woman and a man arrested for contempt of court for not paying a fine on a theft case.

Not paying a fine is not like not paying a utility bill, Locke Graves said.

“This is a fine because they’ve committed a criminal act,” she told the students.

Contact Cindy Leise at 329-7245 or cleise@chroniclet.com.

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