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:
UNITED STATES of America, Appellee, v. Carlo MASTROTOTARO, Appellant.
No. 71-1706.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Argued Nov. 30, 1971.
Decided Feb. 25, 1972.
Joseph J. Balliro, Boston, Mass., for appellant.
J. Frederick Motz, Asst. U. S. Atty. (George Beall, U. S. Atty., on brief), for appellee.
Before SOBELOFF, Senior Circuit Judge, and CRAVEN and FIELD, Circuit Judges.
SOBELOFF, Senior Circuit Judge:
This is an appeal from a jury conviction for aiding and abetting in the transportation of three stolen United States Treasury bills from New York City to Baltimore, Maryland. Appellant was charged with violating 18 U.S.C. §§ 2, 2314 by supplying $25,000 to Vincent C. Teresa in the knowledge that Teresa would use the money as a downpayment for the three stolen bills, each in the face amount of $100,000, and with the further knowledge that the stolen bills were to be transported in interstate commerce. Appellant was indicted and tried with three others who were convicted, but the jury failed to agree as to him and he was retried alone. After the second jury returned its guilty verdict, appellant was fined $5,000 and sentenced to nine years imprisonment.
Mastrototaro’s chief grievance concerns the trial court’s rulings allowing testimony by two of his past associates which revealed certain prior crimes and allegedly prejudiced him by reflecting adversely on his character. The evidence complained of came from Vincent Teresa and John M. Hirschfeld, government witnesses who had, at Mastrotota-ro’s first trial, been convicted of complicity in the theft and transportation of the Treasury bills involved in the instant case.
Not objected to at trial or assigned as error on appeal, although denied by the appellant, was Teresa’s testimony that appellant did deliver to him the $25,000 and that appellant knew, at that time, the use to which the money was to be put. This testimony was the only direct proof of the passing of the money and of appellant’s guilty knowledge.
The appellant contends that it was improper to permit Teresa and Hirschfeld to portray in heavy detail various criminal activities in which they participated with Mastrototaro on other occasions. Appellant further contends that the testimony at issue was not sufficiently connected with the $25,000 to outweigh the prejudicial force with which it colored appellant’s character in the mind of the jury.
The bulk of the challenged testimony described the business relationships existing among appellant, Teresa and Hirschfeld, including the arrangement of gambling junkets to London and Haiti and the operation of a gambling casino in the Caribbean. The witnesses’ recollection of these subjects was heavily interlaced with accounts of the use of crooked dice, the employment of so-called “mechanics” to manipulate card games and of loansharking whereby appellant, Teresa and Hirschfeld preyed on certain selected customers. The thrust of this evidence was that appellant controlled a loosely-knit gambling and loansharking organization, of which Teresa and Hirschfeld were participants, and that appellant supervised and maintained a measure of control over their activities.
The Government maintains that the testimony here attacked was properly admitted to illuminate the background of the $25,000 loan, to demonstrate the nature of the relationship between the parties, and to explain to the jury why Teresa decided to go to Mastrototaro rather than anyone else for the money.
In evaluating these conflicting claims, we are mindful that wide discretion is invested in the District Judge to balance the possible prejudice to a defendant from the revelation of unrelated crimes against the probative force of the evidence to support the charge in the indictment. United States v. Samuel, 431 F.2d 610, 612 (4th Cir. 1970); United States v. Gardin, 382 F.2d 601 (2d Cir. 1967).
Evidence of the commission of one crime is not admissible merely to prove the defendant a “bad man” and therefore more likely to have committed the crime charged. United States v. Ravich, 421 F.2d 1196 (2d Cir.), cert. denied, 400 U.S. 834, 91 S.Ct. 69, 27 L. Ed.2d 66 (1970); Benton v. United States, 233 F.2d 491 (4th Cir. 1956). Nevertheless, if, in the process of proving an element of the crime, such as intent, knowledge or absence of mistake, the testimony discloses other crimes involving the defendant, it is no objection to the admission of such testimony. See, e. g., United States v. Brickley, 426 F.2d 680 (8th Cir.), cert. denied, 400 U. S. 828, 91 S.Ct. 55, 27 L.Ed.2d 57 (1970); United States v. Chase, 372 F. 2d 453 (4th Cir.), cert. denied, 387 U.S. 907, 87 S.Ct. 1688, 18 L.Ed.2d 626 (1967); United States v. Dutsch, 357 F.2d 331 (4th Cir. 1965).
Although this is a borderline case, we are unable to say that admission of the testimony amounted to an abuse of the trial court’s discretion. There was a sufficient link between the testimony complained of and an element of the crime charged, namely, knowledge of the purpose for which the $25,000 was supplied, to support the admission of the challenged evidence. If the Government had limited itself to bare proof of delivery of the money without indicating the context, one might readily question the story’s believability. The transaction Teresa narrated was certainly not a normal one and a juror could well doubt that, out of the blue, Mastro-totaro would supply Teresa $25,000 in one hundred dollar bills, as Teresa claimed and Mastrototaro denied. What the disputed testimony clarifies is the motivation of the appellant in delivering the money to Teresa. When the course of prior dealings between the parties is fully explored, Teresa’s story becomes not only plausible, but convincing. Moreover, since it was the Government’s burden to establish not only that the money was delivered, but that Mastrototaro knew the illegal purpose to which the money was to be applied, it was in order for the Government to trace the parties’ course of conduct.
While we conclude that proper limits have not been overstepped in this case, we do not approve of the extremely lavish treatment accorded by the prosecution to some of these matters. A prudent prosecutor limits himself to what is needed to prove the charge in the indictment. In the process of proving the charge, other offenses may sometimes come to light incidentally, but when the prosecution devotes excessive trial time to this type of “background” material, it runs the risk of trespassing into the impermissible area and jeopardizing any resulting conviction. We therefore admonish District Attorneys to observe restraint in the production of evidence of this character.
Our present criticism aside, however, we are persuaded there was a sufficiently strong thread connecting the challenged evidence to an element of the crime charged so that the trial court, in the exercise of its discretion, could find, as it did, that the probative value of the evidence outweighed any prejudice appellant could have suffered.
Appellant, in addition, raises other claims of error. Although not vigorously pressed, we have, nonetheless, carefully considered each of them and find them without substance.
Accordingly, the judgment is
Affirmed.
. Teresa testified that the arrangement was for the payment of $60,000 in all for the $300,000 worth of stolen bills.

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

Choices:

Answer: 1