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 "state governments, their 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:
UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Thomas R. SCHIFFBAUER, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 90-10624.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Argued and Submitted Sept. 10, 1991.
Decided Feb. 4, 1992.
Bram L. Jacobson, Asst. Federal Public Defender, Phoenix, Ariz., for defendant-appellant.
Janet L. Patterson, Asst. U.S. Atty., Phoenix, Ariz., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before CANBY, and KOZINSKI, Circuit Judges, and NIELSEN, District Judge.
The Honorable Wm. Fremming Nielsen, United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Washington, sitting by designation.
CANBY, Circuit Judge:
Thomas Richard Schiffbauer appeals his bank robbery sentence. He contends that the district court illegally sentenced him to a term exceeding the maximum penalty authorized by 18 U.S.C. § 3581(b). We affirm.
BACKGROUND
A federal grand jury indicted Schiffbauer for the armed robbery of Security Savings and Loan in Mesa, Arizona. Pursuant to a plea agreement, Schiffbauer pled guilty to the lesser included offense of unarmed robbery in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a). At his sentencing hearing, Schiffbauer contended that 18 U.S.C. § 3581(b) classifies this offense as a Class C offense and thereby limits the maximum statutory term to twelve years. The district court rejected this argument and chose to rely on 18 U.S.C. § 3559(b). That statute provides that the maximum term is the term authorized by the statute describing the substantive offense. Because the bank robbery statute authorizes a twenty-year maximum term, the district court imposed a fourteen-year sentence, together with other terms not relevant to this appeal.
DISCUSSION
Schiffbauer challenges the district court’s sentence and its interpretation of federal statutes. We review these matters de novo. See United States v. Schiek, 806 F.2d 943, 944 (9th Cir.1986), cert. denied, 481 U.S. 1032, 107 S.Ct. 1962, 95 L.Ed.2d 534 (1987); United States v. Martinez-Jimenez, 864 F.2d 664, 665-66 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 489 U.S. 1099, 109 S.Ct. 1576, 103 L.Ed.2d 942 (1989).
Schiffbauer contends that the district court sentenced him to a term exceeding the maximum allowable penalty. In determining the maximum term, 18 U.S.C. § 3559 directs us to the statute describing the substantive offense. According to this section, Schiffbauer's fourteen-year sentence clearly fell within the twenty-year range authorized by the bank robbery statute. See 18 U.S.C. § 2113(a).
Schiffbauer argues, however, that 18 U.S.C. § 3581 limited the district court to a twelve-year maximum term. As he notes, section 3559 classifies bank robbery as a Class C felony. 18 U.S.C. § 3559(a)(3). Section 3581 establishes that the sentence for this offense is not more than twelve years. 18 U.S.C. § 3581(b). Moreover, another section directs courts to sentence individuals in accord with section 3581. 18 U.S.C. § 3551(b)(3). Schiffbauer therefore concludes that the district court erred in imposing a fourteen-year term.
We have recently rejected a similar argument. In United States v. LaFleur, 952 F.2d 1537 (9th Cir.1991), we held that the letter-classification sentencing scheme of sections 3559(a) and 3581(b) did not apply to the offense of first degree murder set forth in 18 U.S.C. § 1111, because the latter statute specified its own penalty of a mandatory life sentence. We said that “[tjhere is no indication that § 3581 was intended to modify clearly established statutory sentences.” Id. at 1546. The Second and Third Circuits have reached similar conclusions. See United States v. Gonza lez, 922 F.2d 1044, 1050 (2d Cir.1991); United States v. Donley, 878 F.2d 735, 740 (3d Cir.1989), cert. denied, 494 U.S. 1058, 110 S.Ct. 1528, 108 L.Ed.2d 767 (1990).
Here, too, we conclude that Congress did not intend the penalties set in section 3581(b) to apply to offenses that received letter grades for the first time in section 3559(b). Section 3581(b)’s penalties apply only to offenses that are assigned letter classifications in the statutes describing them. Because Congress has continued to specify maximum penalties without reference to letter-grade classifications, however, section 3581(b) has not yet had any crimes upon which to operate. See Crime Control Act of 1990, Pub.L. 101-647, §§ 322 & 1701, 104 Stat. 4789, 4818 & 4843 (1990).
Section 3559(b), on the other hand, applies to statutes, like the pre-existing statute defining bank robbery, that provide a specific maximum sentence in the statute describing the crime. Thus, the plain language of section 3559(b) states that all of the incidents of the letter grading system shall apply “except that the maximum term of imprisonment is the term authorized by the law describing the offense” (emphasis added).
Congress, at least up to now, has not implemented the letter-grade system contemplated by section 3581(b). It follows that section 3581 is inapplicable to the existing bank robbery offense. This construction follows from the statutes and Congress’s continuing practice of specifying maximum sentences in crime legislation. It is also in accord with the decisions of two other circuits and the views of the Sentencing Commission.
AFFIRMED
. Title 18, United States Code, section 3559, provides in part:
(a) An offense that is not specifically classified by a letter grade in the section defining it, is classified if the maximum term of imprisonment authorized is—
(3) less than twenty-five years but ten or more years, as a Class C felony.
(b) An offense classified under subsection (a) carries all the incidents assigned to the applicable letter designation, except that the maximum term of imprisonment is the term authorized by the law describing the offense. (Emphasis added.)
. Title 18, United States Code, section 3581 provides in part:
(a) A defendant who has been found guilty of an offense may be sentenced to a term of imprisonment.
(b) The authorized terms of imprisonment are....
(3) for a Class C felony not more than twelve years.
. According to the United States Sentencing Commission, Congress has abandoned its plan to assign existing federal crimes letter-grade sentencing classifications. Questions Most Frequently Asked About the Sentencing Guidelines, Volume IV, p. 8 (Dec. 1, 1990). The Commission’s position, of course, cannot serve as evidence of the intent of Congress. We find the Commission’s interpretation to have persuasive value, however, because of its experience and familiarity with the federal criminal laws.
. Because section 3581 has no letter-grade crimes upon which to operate, the direction of section 3551(b)(3) to sentence in accord with section 3581 is equally ineffectual.
.Because there is no ambiguity, Schiffbauer’s attempt to invoke the rule of lenity must fail. See Moskal v. United States, — U.S. -, 111 S.Ct. 461, 465, 112 L.Ed.2d 449 (1990).

Question: What is the total number of appellants in the case that fall into the category "state governments, their agencies, and officials"? Answer with a number.

Choices:

Answer: 0