Task: songer_genresp1

What follows is an opinion from a United States Court of Appeals.
Intervenors who participated as parties at the courts of appeals should be counted as either appellants or respondents when it can be determined whose position they supported. For example, if there were two plaintiffs who lost in district court, appealed, and were joined by four intervenors who also asked the court of appeals to reverse the district court, the number of appellants should be coded as six.
In some cases there is some confusion over who should be listed as the appellant and who as the respondent. This confusion is primarily the result of the presence of multiple docket numbers consolidated into a single appeal that is disposed of by a single opinion. Most frequently, this occurs when there are cross appeals and/or when one litigant sued (or was sued by) multiple litigants that were originally filed in district court as separate actions. The coding rule followed in such cases should be to go strictly by the designation provided in the title of the case. The first person listed in the title as the appellant should be coded as the appellant even if they subsequently appeared in a second docket number as the respondent and regardless of who was characterized as the appellant in the opinion.
To clarify the coding conventions, consider the following hypothetical case in which the US Justice Department sues a labor union to strike down a racially discriminatory seniority system and the corporation (siding with the position of its union) simultaneously sues the government to get an injunction to block enforcement of the relevant civil rights law. From a district court decision that consolidated the two suits and declared the seniority system illegal but refused to impose financial penalties on the union, the corporation appeals and the government and union file cross appeals from the decision in the suit brought by the government. Assume the case was listed in the Federal Reporter as follows:
United States of America,
Plaintiff, Appellant
v
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendant, Appellee.
International Brotherhood of Widget Workers,AFL-CIO
Defendants, Cross-appellants
v
United States of America.
Widgets, Inc. & Susan Kuersten Sheehan, President & Chairman
of the Board
Plaintiff, Appellants,
v
United States of America,
Defendant, Appellee.
This case should be coded as follows:Appellant = United States, Respondents = International Brotherhood of Widget Workers Widgets, Inc., Total number of appellants = 1, Number of appellants that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officials" = 1, Total number of respondents = 3, Number of respondents that fall into the category "private business and its executives" = 2, Number of respondents that fall into the category "groups and associations" = 1.
When coding the detailed nature of participants, use your personal knowledge about the participants, if you are completely confident of the accuracy of your knowledge, even if the specific information is not in the opinion. For example, if "IBM" is listed as the appellant it could be classified as "clearly national or international in scope" even if the opinion did not indicate the scope of the business. 
Your task is to determine the nature of the first listed respondent.

HARRY E. WATKINS, District Judge.
This is an appeal from an order denying a petition for a writ of habeas corpus filed by Robert Roberts, now a Maryland State prisoner. The District Court also denied the certificate of probable cause, required as a prerequisite for appeal under 28 U.S.C.A. § 2253, but allowed the petitioner to appeal in forma pauperis. Counsel was appointed for him in this court. Briefs were filed and oral arguments were heard.
Treating the papers transmitted by the District Court as embodying an application for a certificate of probable cause, the record shows no basis for granting a certificate of probable cause.
On March 3, 1953, appellant was sentenced in the Criminal Court of Baltimore City on five separate offenses to run consecutively for. a total of fifty-four years. He was given two years for being a rogue and vagabond, twenty years on each of two charges of simple assault, two years for possession of a deadly weapon, and ten years for theft of an automobile.
From the record it appears that the simple assault charges related to assault upon two police officers when they arrested appellant on a traffic charge and told him to get into a police car. In doing so a bullet from a pistol which the defendant was carrying was .discharged into the shoulder of one of the officers. When the appellant got into the back seat of the police car, appellant hit the police officer who was driving the car on the back of the head with the butt of his pistol. Appellant contends that his gun was accidentally discharged, and that fearing the officers, who were endeavoring to draw their pistols, would shoot him, he was acting in self-defense in hitting the other police officer, who was-driving the car, on the head with his-pistol.
Appellant’s main contention here is that he is entitled to relief from further imprisonment because of the forty-year sentence for two cases of simple assault. This same contention of appellant has been considered and rejected on three separate occasions by three Associate Judges of the Supreme Bench of Baltimore, and upon appeal by appellant, or permission for leave to appeal, their action has been affirmed on three separate occasions by the Maryland Court of Appeals. In addition thereto, two separate petitions to the Supreme Court of' the United States for certiorari have-been denied.
Maryland is a so-called common, law state. There is no prescribed statutory provision with regard to fine or imprisonment for eases of assault and battery. Punishment in such cases is left to the judicial discretion of the trial judge dependent upon the facts and circumstances of the particular case. Appellant contends that a twenty-year sentence for simple assault is illegal and amounts to cruel and unusual punishment because it is overshadowed by the Maryland maximum punishment for assault, with intent to murder, which is only fifteen years. If the sentence of twenty-years was incorrect because in excess or fifteen years authorized for the more aggravated assault, then a correction of the-sentence would be to reduce the sentence from twenty years to fifteen years. Since a two-year sentence was imposed for rogue and vagabond (authorized by Maryland Statute, Art. 27, Section 490),. the twenty-year sentence for assault on one police officer, corrected to fifteen-, years, would aggregate at least a legal sentence of seventeen years to begin in 1953. This same point was raised by appellant in the state court and, when the-case reached the Maryland Court of Appeals, Judge Hammond stated in Roberts-v. Warden, 206 Md. 246, at page 255, 111 A.2d 597, at page 601:
“In the case before us, the appellant was first sentenced to two years for being a rogue and vagabond. That sentence will not expire until March, 1955. He was next sentenced to twenty years for assault. He concedes that at least ten years of the second sentence can legally be imposed. The appellant would, therefore, be in legal confinement until 1965 and his application for the writ must be dismissed as premature.”
Judge Hammond went on to say that in no event could the excessiveness of the sentences be considered on habeas corpus until appellant has served so much of the sentence as was within the power of the court to impose. The Court of Appeals refused to consider the substantive matter on habeas corpus, and went on to state that its decision did not cut off all avenues of relief to appellant, but that he could request the trial court to correct the sentences if they were illegal under Rule 10(a) of the Criminal Rules of Practice and Procedure, now Rule 744a of the Maryland Rules of Procedure, and if the trial court refused to correct an illegal sentence, its refusal would be appealable to the Court of Appeals. On advice of the Court of Appeals, he asked the trial court to correct the sentences, which request was refused. No appeal was filed from this denial. It is quite clear that appellant’s present application for a writ of habeas corpus to be released from custody is at least premature.
Other points raised by appellant in this appeal are: (1) that the attorney of his own selection exceeded or abused his authority by entering on his behalf and in his presence (without any objection by him at the time) pleas of guilty to the several indictments; (2) that docket entries must have been altered by connivance or collusion of the Judge with defense counsel; and (3) that the Court of Appeals has arbitrarily evaded responsibility for deciding the legality of' his sentence. These and many other points have been raised by appellant and fairly considered and decided by the highest court of the state. See Roberts v. Warden, 206 Md. 246, 111 A.2d 597; Roberts v. Warden, 214 Md. 611, 135 A.2d 446, certiorari denied 355 U.S. 966, 78 S.Ct. 556, 2 L.Ed.2d 540; Roberts v. Warden, 221 Md. 576, 155 A.2d 891, certiorari denied Roberts v. Pepersack, 362 U.S. 953, 80 S.Ct. 866, 4 L.Ed.2d 871. The state court had before it a transcript of the record. There has been a fair and’ satisfactory consideration of the case. Under all these circumstances, the Federal court need not have a rehearing on-the same allegations and facts. Brown v. Allen, 1953, 344 U.S. 443, 465, 73 S.Ct. 397, 97 L.Ed. 469. In denying the writ of habeas corpus in this case and in refusing a certificate of probable cause, Judge Chesnut, of the District Court,, has filed an opinion, 190 F.Supp. 578, which is a part of the record in this case. In that opinion Judge Chesnut sets forth in detail the findings of the various state judges who have passed on these contentions.
Upon a review of the entire record, we-find no possible merit in this petition for a writ of habeas corpus. The application, from the denial of which this appeal was taken, presents no such unusual' circumstances as would have warranted the District Judge in issuing a writ of habeas corpus in this situation. Hobbs v. Swenson, 4 Cir., 1952, 199 F.2d 268. No certificate of probable cause will be issued, and the appeal will be dismissed.
Appeal dismissed.

Question: What is the nature of the first listed respondent?
A. private business (including criminal enterprises)
B. private organization or association
C. federal government (including DC)
D. sub-state government (e.g., county, local, special district)
E. state government (includes territories & commonwealths)
F. government - level not ascertained
G. natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)
H. miscellaneous
I. not ascertained
Answer:

Answer: D