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, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Anthony N. CARRION, Defendant-Appellant. UNITED STATES of America, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Clifford Wade GUTTERSRUD, Defendant-Appellant.
Nos. 71-1363, 71-1364.
United States Court of Appeals, Ninth Circuit.
Feb. 24, 1972.
Victor Sherman (argued), of Nasatir, Sherman & Hirsch, Beverly Hills, Cal., for defendant-appellant.
Elgin Edwards, Asst. U. S. Atty. (argued), Robert L. Meyer, U. S. Atty., Los Angeles, Cal., for plaintiff-appellee.
Before CHAMBERS, DUNIWAY and HUFSTEDLER, Circuit Judges.
PER CURIAM:
Carrion and Guttersrud appeal from their convictions for smuggling marihuana by airplane from Mexico into the United States in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 176a.
On November 19, 1970, an untested informant told Customs Agent Rosen-blatt that Carrion and Guttersrud were in Mexico, that they were going to transport marihuana from Mexico to one of three airports in the Los Angeles area using a Beeehcraft Bonanza, and that the pilot would falsely identify the plane’s FAA registration number to the tower. Customs agents were dispatched to all three airports, including the Torrance airport. Early in the evening of the same day, Agent Watson radioed Ro-senblatt that a Beeehcraft Bonanza had requested landing instructions and that the registration number of the aircraft had been falsely identified. When Carrion and Guttersrud were about 150 feet from the plane, Rosenblatt met them. He exercised a warrant for arrest of Carrion on an unrelated charge and caused Guttersrud to be detained for questioning. Thereafter, Rosenblatt looked in the window of the plane and saw a tarp-covered load of boxes bearing Spanish writing. He obtained the keys to the plane from Carrion, searched the plane, and found 404 pounds of marihuana.
The Government did not produce the informant at trial. It did produce the boxes with the Spanish writing in which the marihuana was found, a worn match book with Spanish writing on it that had been found in Guttersrud’s flight bag, a piece of paper with some Spanish written on it found in Carrion’s wallet, and maps of Mexico found with other maps in Guttersrud’s flight bag. There was also evidence that from the time appellants rented the plane to the time of the landing at Torrance, enough fuel had been consumed and enough flight time had elapsed to make a round trip to Mexico.
The sole question that we find necessary to reach is appellants’ claim that the evidence was insufficient to support their convictions for smuggling. The Government does not and could not rely upon the informant’s tip to prove that appellants were in Mexico. It offered that evidence only on the issue of probable cause to justify the warrantless search of the plane. Assuming, without deciding, that the search was valid, the Government’s evidence was ample to justify an inference that the marihuana originated in Mexico, but the evidence considered as a whole was inadequate to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that appellants smuggled it, the one offense with which they were charged.
There was no evidence that the aircraft had been seen in Mexico. The fact that it had used enough fuel and had enough time to make the trip to Mexico does not raise any inference that Mexico had been its destination. The most that can be said is that these facts are consistent with the Government’s claim that the plane made a round trip to Mexico.
Guttersrud’s possession of a map of Mexico, along with other maps, and his having a worn match book bearing an advertisement for a Mexican motel, and Carrion’s having a slip of paper in his wallet with a few innocuous words in Spanish on it added nothing of significance. A similar harvest could be produced from an inspection of countless glove compartments of automobiles driven in the Southwest. An inference drawn from that evidence that the possessor had been in Mexico would be severely strained, and the further inference that the possessor had been in Mexico on a particular date would be wholly untenable.
The Government failed to prove the only charge it made. (Cf. United States v. Mollat (9th Cir. 1971) 448 F.2d 789.)
The judgments are reversed with directions to dismiss the indictments.

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