Task: songer_appnatpr

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.
Note that if an individual is listed by name, but their appearance in the case is as a government official, then they should be counted as a government rather than as a private person. For example, in the case "Billy Jones & Alfredo Ruiz v Joe Smith" where Smith is a state prisoner who brought a civil rights suit against two of the wardens in the prison (Jones & Ruiz), the following values should be coded: number of appellants that fall into the category "natural persons" =0 and number that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials" =2. A similar logic should be applied to businesses and associations. Officers of a company or association whose role in the case is as a representative of their company or association should be coded as being a business or association rather than as a natural person. However, employees of a business or a government who are suing their employer should be coded as natural persons. Likewise, employees who are charged with criminal conduct for action that was contrary to the company policies should be considered natural persons.
If the title of a case listed a corporation by name and then listed the names of two individuals that the opinion indicated were top officers of the same corporation as the appellants, then the number of appellants should be coded as three and all three were coded as a business (with the identical detailed code). Similar logic should be applied when government officials or officers of an association were listed by name.
Your specific task is to determine the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons". If the total number cannot be determined (e.g., if the appellant is listed as "Smith, et. al." and the opinion does not specify who is included in the "et.al."), then answer 99.

OPINION OF THE COURT
STALEY, Circuit Judge.
This is an appeal from a judgment of conviction and sentence imposed against Meliah Bell in the District Court of the Virgin Islands, following the jury’s verdict that the defendant was guilty of violating Title 14, V.I.C. § 834(2), obtaining money or property by false pretenses. The defendant has asserted numerous errors in this appeal, but the crucial issue presented concerns the district court’s instruction to the jury that they could consider the defendant’s failure to testify to deny or explain evidence against him as tending to indicate the truth of such evidence, and inferences drawn therefrom. We conclude that this instruction was erroneous and we will reverse for a new trial.
The case against Mr. Bell was instituted by information alleging that the defendant defrauded the American Express Company and various local retail merchants of the island of St. Thomas through the defendant’s unauthorized, fraudulent use of a credit card. At the trial, the Government produced witnesses to show that the defendant made a number of purchases of watches and luxury items at different shops, and the owner of the card did not authorize the defendant to use it. The defense was predicated on a theory of mistaken identity; aside from recalling one of the Government’s witnesses, defense counsel sought to establish his theory through cross-examination. The defendant did' not testify.
After closing arguments, and without any request to do so, the district court included the following in its instruction to the jury:
“You are instructed that it is the constitutional right of a defendant in a criminal case that he may not be compelled to testify. Thus, whether or not he does testify is entirely his own decision. Because of the facts within his knowledge, if he does not testify or if he does testify he fails to deny or explain such evidence or facts against him, the jury may take the failure into consideration as tending to indicate the truth of such evidence and also indicating an inference that may be reasonably drawn to it. The failure of the defendant to deny or explain evidence against him, or by itself, neither warrants an inference of guilt nor does it relieve 'the prosecution of the burden of proving every essential element of the crime and guilt of the defendant beyond all reasonable doubt.” (Emphasis added.)
Clearly, were this instruction given in another Federal district court, we would be compelled to reverse. Griffin v. State of California, 380 U.S. 609, 85 S.Ct. 1229, 14 L.Ed.2d 106 (1965); Wilson v. United States, 149 U.S. 60, 13 S.Ct. 765, 37 L.Ed. 650 (1893). As noted in Griffin, 380 U.S. at 612, 85 S.Ct. at 1229, the Federal rule vested upon 18 U.S.C. § 3481:
“In the trial of all persons charged with the commission of offenses against the United States and in all proceedings in courts martial and courts of inquiry in any State, District, Possession or Territory, the person charged shall, at his own request, be a competent witness. His failure to make such request shall not create any presumption against him.”
The Supreme Court in Griffin went further to “hold that the Fifth Amendment, in its direct application to the Federal Government and in its bearing on the States by reason of the Fourteenth Amendment, forbids either comment by the prosecution on the accused’s silence or instructions by the court that such silence is evidence of guilt.” 380 U.S. at 615, 85 S.Ct. at 1233.
However, the Government urges that the relevant law, properly applied in the district court, was the local law of the Virgin Islands. The argument is that the privilege against self-incrimination accrues to persons in the Virgin Islands by virtue of Section 3 of the Revised Organic Act of the Virgin Islands, 68 Stat. 497, and not because of the Fifth Amendment. The rules of decision in the courts of the Virgin Islands are the “rules of the common laws, as expressed in the restatements of the law approved by the American Law Institute, and to the extent not so expressed, as generally understood and applied in the United States * * 1 V.I.C. § 4 (1967). The American Law Institute’s Model Code of Evidence, Rule 201(3) expressly sanctions comment on an accused’s refusal to testify by judge and counsel. Ergo, the instruction was not erroneous.
We think this argument is without merit. The statutory basis for the rule forbidding comment, Wilson, supra, is by its terms applicable not only to United States District Courts, but also to “Territorial” courts. Thus the fact that the District Court of the Virgin Islands is not a constitutional court, Callwood v. Callwood, 127 F.Supp. 179 (D.V.I., 1954), and that other provisions of the United States Code are not applicable to proceedings therein, is not relevant here.
Second, the Model Code of Evidence relied upon by the Government is Not a restatement of the common law. Indeed the comment to the section relied upon by the Government which would authorize comment on an accused’s refusal to testify states:
“This has been accepted nowhere at common law except in Maine and possibly in New Jersey and Connecticut In most states a statute or the current interpretation of a constitutional or statutory provision prohibits all comment and inferences.”
As noted in Griffin:
“The overwhelming consensus of the States, however, is opposed to allowing comment on the defendant’s failure to testify. The legislatures or courts of 44 States have recognized that such comment is, in light of the privilege against self-incrimination ‘an unwarrantable line of argument.’ ” 380 U.S. at 611, n. 3, 85 S.Ct. at 1231.
Moreover, without further extending this opinion, we see no reason for permitting a different standard to apply to proceedings in the Virgin Islands than applies to those in other Federal and state courts, and were it necessary to do so, we would exercise our supervisory power to forbid such comment. Cf. Government of the Virgin Islands v. Lovell, 378 F.2d 799, 805 (C.A. 3, 1967).
The Government next argues that even were the Griffin rule applicable, the instruction constituted mere “harmless error” under the circumstances. Chapman v. State of California, 386 U.S. 18, 87 S.Ct. 824, 17 L.Ed.2d 705 (1967). The “harmless” nature of the error is said to flow from the fact that there was only one such comment; there was an “overwhelming abundance of direct evidence”; and the district court tempered the thrust of the instruction by adding that the Government still had the burden of proving each element and the failure to testify itself did not warrant an inference of guilt.
The Supreme Court established the rule in Chapman, supra, “that before a federal constitutional error can be held harmless, the court must be able to declare a belief that it was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” 386 U.S. at 24, 87 S.Ct. at 828. While the evidence introduced to convict Bell was adequate to support the jury’s verdict, we cannot confidently assert that the district court’s authorization to the jury to consider the inferences from the defendant’s failure to testify had no effect on the outcome of the verdict. The Government’s case was principally based on identifications of the defendant by various sales persons as the individual who purchased items from them with an American Express card belonging to a Meyer Odence well over a year before the date of the trial. Considering the heavy volume of business conducted by the merchants in St. Thomas, a great deal of it involving credit cards, and the number of persons served by any salesman, the jury may well have considered the inferences which could be drawn from Bell’s failure to testify — including the obvious proposition that he could not deny the purchases —a decisive element. That the jury may have been so influenced is not rebutted by the Government.
Accordingly, we must reverse the judgment of conviction and remand for a new trial.
. We have previously upheld this manner of proceeding in the Virgin Islands. Rivera v. Government of the Virgin Islands, 375 F.2d 988 (C.A.3, 1967).

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "natural persons"? Answer with a number.
Answer:

Answer: 1