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 "the federal government, its agencies, and officials". 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:
Warren G. MYERS, Appellant, v. Dr. Joseph R. BLALOCK, Superintendent, Southwestern State Hospital, Marion, Virginia, Appellee.
No. 7877.
United States Court of Appeals Fourth Circuit.
Argued Oct. 5, 1959.
Decided Nov. 2, 1959.
George R. Humrickhouse (Court-Appointed Counsel) Richmond, Va., for appellant.
Reno S. Harp, III, Asst. Atty. Gen. of Virginia (A. S. Harrison, Jr., Atty. Gen. of Virginia, on the brief), for ap-pellee.
Before SOBELOFF, Chief Judge, SOPER, Circuit Judge, and FIELD, District Judge.
PER CURIAM.
This is an appeal from an order of the District Court denying appellant’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus. Appellant has been confined since 1942 as an insane person in the Southwestern State Hospital, Marion, Virginia, having been committed to the institution after his indictment for two murders. His principal contention is that he is entitled to a jury trial under Sec. 37-93, Code of Virginia, 1950, on the issue of his sanity.
The appellee insists, however, that the District Court properly dismissed the petition because it failed to allege that state remedies had been exhausted. In the view we take of the case we need address ourselves to this point only.
Appellant’s petition in the instant case contains the following pertinent paragraph :
“(22) Your petitioner has petitioned both the Circuit Court of Smyth County and the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia for a writ of habeas corpus, and also for a few weeks order of transfer — These petitions were erroneously denied.”
The appellee’s brief attaches certain documents not introduced into the record below, which disclose that appellant filed an original petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, and this was denied on June 10, 1953. Thereafter, he filed another petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the Circuit Court of Smyth County, Virginia, which that court, on September 23, 1953, dismissed after holding a full and complete hearing. Some four years later, appellant filed a petition in the Circuit Court of Smyth County, Virginia, for an order transferring him to another hospital. This too was denied, on September 5, 1957. Appellant thereupon applied to the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia for a writ of error, which was denied on November 29, 1957.
The mere recital of these details makes it clear that appellant has not pursued the required course to exhaust state remedies: this would involve initiating an action in the Virginia Circuit Court, seeking a writ of error from the Supreme Court of Appeals of Virginia, and then a writ of certiorari from the Supreme Court of the United States. Such is the command of 28 U.S.C. § 2254 as expounded at length in Darr v. Burford, 1950, 339 U.S. 200, 70 S.Ct. 587, 94 L.Ed. 761.
The lawyer appointed by us to assist the appellant in this appeal, who has advocated his client’s cause ably and conscientiously, pressed upon us in argument a statement in the concurring opinion of Mr. Justice Frankfurter in the leading case of Brown v. Allen, 1953, 344 U.S. 443, 502, 73 S.Ct. 397, 443, 97 L.Ed. 469:
“Care will naturally be taken that the frequent lack of technical competence of prisoners should not strangle consideration of a valid constitutional claim that is bunglingly presented.”
Counsel seems to assume that appellant’s failure to allege exhaustion of state remedies was due to mere inexpert draftsmanship in the petition which was prepared without the assistance of an attorney. We agree with the admonition expressed in the cited passage. However, not only have no facts been alleged below, but nothing has been represented to us indicating the requisite exhaustion of remedies. Indeed the opposite has been demonstrated by the documents appended to appellee’s brief. Yet appellant's attorney has moved to strike ap-pellee’s brief and appended matter, on the ground that this matter is not included in the record certified to this court. We consider that the appellee has aided us by supplying pertinent public records, which appellant did not furnish in his petition.
A person should not be denied relief to which he is entitled, merely because of inept draftsmanship. On the other hand, having alleged facts obscurely in his petition, he cannot object to the production of data brought forward in response to his insistence that the obscurity which he created should be resolved in his favor. It would doubtless have been better if these public records had been presented by the appellee in the District Court. Nevertheless, we are not prepared to say that appellee’s production of them here is improper in the circumstances. The motion to strike must be denied.
Finally, counsel contends that his client attempted to exhaust his state remedies in the 1957 proceedings by seeking certiorari from the Supreme Court of the United States. It is said that the Superintendent of the State Hospital would not allow the petition for certiorari to be mailed without first having the opportunity to inspect it, in accordance with the institution's routine; to this the appellant refused to agree. Counsel also complains that communications between him and his client were censored by the officers of the institution.
These allegations, made to us orally for the first time, were never before the District Judge, and if the petitioner wishes to claim in a new petition in the District Court that state remedies have been exhausted, or that the circumstances relied upon constitute an excuse for failing to exhaust them, the matter may be considered in that court. We intimate no opinion as to these matters.
The order dismissing the petition is Affirmed.
. The only non-public document appended by the appellee is a recent letter of the Superintendent of the Hospital concerning the appellant’s present mental condition. This we have not considered in reaching our decision.

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "the federal government, its agencies, and officialss"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0