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:
William A. JONES, Jr., Appellant, v. Bill ARMONTROUT, Appellee.
No. 91-1853.
United States Court of Appeals, Eighth Circuit.
Submitted Dec. 10, 1991.
Decided Jan. 8, 1992.
Curtis Blood, Collinsville, Ill., argued, for appellant.
Frank Jung, Asst. Atty. Gen., Jefferson City, Mo., argued, for appellee.
Before ARNOLD, Circuit Judge, BRIGHT, Senior Circuit Judge, and FAGG, Circuit Judge.
ARNOLD, Circuit Judge.
This is a petition for habeas corpus filed under 28 U.S.C. § 2254 by William A. Jones, Jr., a prisoner in state custody. Jones claims that his federal rights were violated when a Missouri statute, enacted after his conviction, was not applied to reduce his sentence. The District Court disagreed with Jones’s contention and dismissed his petition. We affirm.
On August 29, 1988, Jones pleaded guilty to three drug offenses. He was sentenced to three concurrent terms of 10 years. At the time, the maximum punishment for the offenses in question was 20 years. Mo.Ann.Stat. § 195.200.1(1) (Vernon 1983). Later, on August 28, 1989, the maximum penalty was reduced to seven years. Mo.Ann.Stat. § 195.202 (Vernon Supp.1991). At the bottom of Jones’s theory of relief is Mo.Ann.Stat. § 1.160 (Vernon 1969), which, he claims, entitles him to a reduction of sentence to three concurrent seven-year terms. This statute provides in pertinent part:
No offense committed ... or prosecution commenced or pending previous to or at the time when any statutory provision is repealed or amended, shall be affected by the repeal or amendment, ... except ... that if the penalty or punishment for any offense is reduced or lessened by any alteration of the law creating the offense, the penalty or punishment shall be assessed according to the amendatory law.
The District Court interpreted this provision not to apply to Jones’s case, because the prosecution against him was no longer pending at the time the law reducing the punishment became effective. Jones claims, as a matter of statutory interpretation, that the District Court was mistaken, but that contention, even if we agreed with it, would not entitle him to federal habeas corpus relief. An incorrect application of state law, without more, doés not establish that a prisoner is being held in violation of the laws or Constitution of the United States, which is a prerequisite for relief under Section 2254 of the Judicial Code.
In an attempt to avoid the force of this reasoning, Jones’s appointed counsel, who has shown considerable ingenuity on behalf of his client, also makes a Sixth Amendment argument. This amendment, made applicable to the states through the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, entitled Jones to the effective assistance of counsel, the argument runs. If counsel had filed an appeal from Jones’s conviction, the appeal would probably have still been pending at the time the new, seven-year penalty became effective. And, even if no appeal had been filed, counsel would have had one year, that is, until August 29, 1989, within which to file a motion for a belated appeal under Mo.Sup. Ct.R. 30.03. The one-year period expired just one day after the effective date of the new, more lenient sentencing statute. So, even if the motion for leave to file a late notice of appeal had ultimately been denied, Jones’s case would have been pending when the new law became effective, and he would have been entitled to its benefit.
There are a number of problems with this argument. In the first place, Jones did have counsel at the time he pleaded guilty and was sentenced. If there had been anything to appeal, counsel would no doubt have appealed. Jones does not claim that there would have been any basis for an appeal, and, in view of the fact that the convictions were based on pleas of guilty, we cannot think of any basis, either. Jones points out that the bill which ultimately reduced the penalty to seven years was introduced in the Missouri State Senate on January 9, 1989, so a lawyer, if one had been appointed for him, could have found out about the bill, followed its progress, and been ready to file an appropriate motion at the time it became effective. We are unaware of any authority that would impose such a far-ranging obligation on a state. One against whom a criminal prosecution has been filed is entitled to counsel, either retained or appointed. But once the prosecution is complete, there is no requirement, at least none in the federal Constitution, that counsel stay with the defendant, so to speak, in case some later event, not even foreseeable at the time of the conviction, should occur to entitle the defendant to some sort of relief.
On this theory, every person convicted of crime would be assigned counsel by the state simply for the purpose of watching to see if anything potentially favorable, in the form of a new law or otherwise, might happen. We can understand Jones’s disappointment that, as things worked out in his case, he had no lawyer standing by to try to take advantage of the new statute at the proper time. We are clear, though, that the absence of this kind of standby counsel does not infringe any federal constitutional right.
Affirmed.
. The Hon. John F. Nangle, Senior United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Missouri.

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