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:
Merle BURNSIDE, Appellant, v. Maurice H. SIGLER, Warden, Nebraska Penal Complex, Appellee.
No. 71-1359.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Nov. 24, 1971.
Merle Burnside, pro se.
Clarence A. H. Meyer, Atty. Gen. of Neb., and Mel Kammerlohr, Asst. Atty. Gen., Lincoln, Neb., on brief for appel-lee.
Before MATTHES, Chief Judge, LAY, Circuit Judge, and HUNTER, District Judge.
PER CURIAM.
Appeal is made from the federal district court’s denial of a writ of habeas corpus by a state prisoner, 329 F.Supp. 1257. On June 17, 1969, the petitioner pleaded guilty to the crime of burglary in the state district court. He was sentenced to a term of three to ten years. On petitioner’s appeal asserting inter alia that his plea was involuntary the Nebraska Supreme Court affirmed the conviction. State v. Burnside, 185 Neb. 234, 175 N.W.2d 1 (1970). In his appeal from the denial of the writ of habeas corpus petitioner basically contends that his plea of guilty was involuntary in that he was wrongfully induced to enter a guilty plea by reason of a promise by the state to drop charges of being an habitual criminal and because of ineffective assistance of his own counsel.
The decision of Brady v. United States, 397 U.S. 742, 751, 90 S.Ct. 1463, 25 L.Ed. 2d 747 (1970), disposes of petitioner’s claim that he was improperly induced to plead guilty in exchange for a “bargain” with the state that it would drop the habitual criminal charge. The Supreme Court has generally noted that a petitioner represented by counsel “is bound by his plea and his conviction unless he can allege and prove serious derelictions on the part of counsel sufficient to show that his plea was not, after all, a knowing and intelligent act.” McMann v. Richardson, 397 U.S. 759, 774, 90 S.Ct. 1441, 1450, 25 L.Ed.2d 763 (1970).
As to petitioner’s claim that his guilty plea was induced by ineffective assistance of counsel, petitioner produced one witness who claimed that petitioner’s counsel refused to call him notwithstanding his alleged knowledge and willingness to present significant testimony impeaching the key witness of the state. It is undisputed that petitioner was told by his counsel that the witness had refused to testify for him and had in fact written a letter offering to be a state’s witness. This was denied by the witness. There was considerable conflict in the testimony. It is argued by petitioner on appeal that the present record was insufficient to sustain the trial court’s finding that petitioner was not misled by his counsel and thereby did not suffer from ineffective assistance of counsel.
The primary difficulty in passing on this question is that the record is totally silent concerning petitioner’s exhaustion of his state remedy as to his contention of ineffective assistance of counsel on the grounds alleged. In petitioner’s appeal from his plea of guilty to the Nebraska Supreme Court, although one of the allegations in that appeal was ineffective assistance of counsel, there was no testimony adduced in the state court in order for the state court to have an opportunity to review this claim in the manner now made.
Under these circumstances the order denying the writ of habeas corpus relating to ineffective assistance of counsel is reversed and the cause remanded with directions to dismiss the same for failure of the petitioner to adequately exhaust his state remedy. Cf. Buffalo Chief v. State of South Dakota, 425 F.2d 271 (8 Cir. 1970).

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