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
Before CHOY and KENNEDY, Circuit Judges, and WONG, District Judge.
CHOY, Circuit Judge:
Rueter and Thoreson were convicted of conspiracy to possess, with intent to distribute, hashish, a controlled substance. Possession with intent to distribute is a crime under 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1) and conspiracy to violate a narcotics law is prohibited by 21 U.S.C. § 846.
On appeal they bring “Wharton’s Rule,” impossibility, and entrapment challenges against their convictions.
We affirm.
Facts
Thoreson approached a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) informant and said that he was looking for a major source of hashish. The informant introduced Thoreson to DEA undercover agents. Thoreson expressed interest in buying 106 kilograms of hashish for $110,000. The agent said he would provide the hashish, but the deal fell through.
Subsequently Thoreson brought Rueter to meet with the agents, describing Rueter as a long-time friend and business associate. Rueter said that he had buyers for 50 kilograms at $1,800 per kilogram. The parties made arrangements for a sale of the 106 kilograms to Thoreson and Rueter with Rueter making a $27,000 cash down payment and the balance to be paid from the profits on this and another deal in which Rueter was engaged.
When Rueter handed over the down payment, he was arrested along with Thoreson.
Wharton’s Rule
Wharton’s Rule is that “[a]n agreement by two persons to commit a particular crime cannot be prosecuted as a conspiracy when the crime is of such a nature as to necessarily require the participation of two persons for its commission.” 1 R. Anderson, Wharton’s Criminal Law & Procedure 191 (1957). Classic Wharton’s Rule offenses are crimes such as adultery, incest, bigamy and duelling, which are characterized by a congruence of the agreement with the substantive offense. The rule is considered an aid to the construction of statutes — a presumption that the legislature intended that the conspiracy count be merged with the substantive offense. Iannelli v. United States, 420 U.S. 770, 785-86, 95 S.Ct. 1284, 1293, 43 L.Ed.2d 616, 627 (1975).
Application of the rule is limited to cases in which the essential participants are the only conspirators. Gebardi v. United States, 287 U.S. 112, 122 n. 6, 53 S.Ct. 35, 37, 77 L.Ed. 206, 211 (1932); Baker v. United States, 393 F.2d 604, 610 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 393 U.S. 836, 89 S.Ct. 110, 21 L.Ed.2d 106 (1968). The crime of possession with intent to distribute is frequently committed by a single person so Wharton’s Rule has no bearing. See United States v. Pezzino, 535 F.2d 483 (9th Cir. 1976). Even if it did, this case would fall under the “third party” exception of Gebardi, supra, since there were two buyers involved, and only one would be necessary to a sale.
Impossibility
Rueter and Thoreson urge that because DEA policy is against actually providing the drugs to buyers in deals such as this one, they could not have possessed it and are entitled to an absolute defense of impossibility.
In fact, of course, defendants were convicted of conspiring to violate the law. The conspiracy was complete when the conspirators had agreed to commit the offense and one of them had done an overt act in furtherance of the agreement. The accomplishment of the conspiracy’s goal is immaterial to the crime. United States v. Bayer, 331 U.S. 532, 542, 67 S.Ct. 1394, 1399, 91 L.Ed. 1654, 1661 (1947).
Entrapment
In United States v. Russell, 411 U.S. 423, 93 S.Ct. 1637, 36 L.Ed.2d 366 (1973), the conviction of Russell for having unlawfully manufactured methamphetamine was upheld. Russell had argued that, since an undercover agent had provided a scarce ingredient necessary to the manufacture of the drug, he had been entrapped, and that the infiltration of the operation was fundamentally unfair.
In the present case the Government did little, if anything at all, to create the conspiracy. Thoreson initiated the contact with the DEA informant, and he found his co-conspirator without the help of the Government. In Russell, supra, the undercover agent had initiated the contact with the defendants, provided them with a raw material, and asked them to deal with him. If that course of conduct was acceptable, the course of conduct in this case is as well.
The instructions given to the jury on entrapment were unobjectionable and the defendants’ attack on them is without merit.
AFFIRMED.

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

Answer: 2