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.
When coding the detailed nature of participants, use your personal knowledge about the participants, if you are completely confident of the accuracy of your knowledge, even if the specific information is not in the opinion. For example, if "IBM" is listed as the appellant it could be classified as "clearly national or international in scope" even if the opinion did not indicate the scope of the business. 

Your task concerns the first listed appellant. The nature of this litigant falls into the category "natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)". Your task is to determine which of these categories best describes the income of the litigant. Consider the following categories: "not ascertained", "poor + wards of state" (e.g., patients at state mental hospital; not prisoner unless specific indication that poor), "presumed poor" (e.g., migrant farm worker), "presumed wealthy" (e.g., high status job - like medical doctors, executives of corporations that are national in scope, professional athletes in the NBA or NFL; upper 1/5 of income bracket), "clear indication of wealth in opinion", "other - above poverty line but not clearly wealthy" (e.g., public school teachers, federal government employees)." Note that "poor" means below the federal poverty line; e.g., welfare or food stamp recipients. There must be some specific indication in the opinion that you can point to before anyone is classified anything other than "not ascertained". Prisoners filing "pro se" were classified as poor, but litigants in civil cases who proceed pro se were not presumed to be poor. Wealth obtained from the crime at issue in a criminal case was not counted when determining the wealth of the criminal defendant (e.g., drug dealers).

Opinion:
Jimmy Seth PERRY, Petitioner, v. Dr. Stanley BLACKLEDGE, Warden, Central Prison, Raleigh, North Carolina, and State of North Carolina, Respondents.
No. 71-2198.
United States Court of Appeals, Fourth Circuit.
Dec. 27, 1971.
Jimmy Seth Perry, pro se.
Jacob L. Safron, Asst. Atty. Gen. of N. C., Raleigh, N. C., for respondents.
Before SOBELOFF and BRYAN, Senior Circuit Judges, and WINTER, Circuit Judge.
SOBELOFF, Senior Circuit Judge:
Petitioner here seeks review of the District Court’s dismissal of his habeas corpus petition, brought under 28 U.S.C. § 2254, for failure to exhaust state remedies.
In 1969, Perry was brought to trial in the District Court for Northampton County on a misdemeanor charge — assaulting a fellow inmate at the Odem Farm Unit of the North Carolina Department of Corrections. Upon being convicted, petitioner was sentenced to six months, sentence to run consecutively to the sentence he was then serving.
Due to the consecutive nature of the sentence imposed, petitioner appealed his conviction to the Northampton Superior Court where, in accordance with North Carolina law, his earlier conviction and sentence were nullified and he was tried de novo. N. C. Gen. Stat. §§ 7A-290, 15-177.1 (1969). This time, for the same acts underlying the misdemeanor conviction, Perry was charged with the felony of assault with a deadly weapon. Petitioner pleaded guilty and received a sentence of from five to seven years. This sentence was the same length as one that the petitioner was already serving and was imposed concurrently with the preexisting sentence.
Perry now seeks federal habeas corpus, claiming that his constitutional rights were violated when, because he appealed from his misdemeanor conviction, he was subjected to a more severe sentence. See Rice v. North Carolina, 434 F.2d 297 (4th Cir. 1970), cert, granted, North Carolina v. Rice, 401 U.S. 1008, 91 S.Ct. 1256, 28 L.Ed.2d 544 (1971). Admittedly, petitioner has never presented his claim to the North Carolina state courts and, ordinarily, this fact alone would justify the denial of federal habeas corpus relief. Ganger v. Peyton, 379 F.2d 709 (4th Cir. 1967); Whitley v. North Carolina, 357 F.2d 75 (4th Cir. 1966).
However, the requirement that a state prisoner seeking federal post conviction relief must first exhaust his state remedies will not bar federal relief where resort to the state courts is but a futile exercise. 28 U.S.C. § 2254(b); Patton v. North Carolina, 381 F.2d 636 (4th Cir. 1967), cert, denied, 390 U.S. 905, 88 S.Ct. 818, 19 L.Ed.2d 871. This circuit has several times recognized that such futility exists where there are decisions of the highest state court directly against the claim of the petitioner and there appears no indication that the state court is inclined to change its position. Ralph v. Warden, 438 F.2d 786, n. 1 at 788 (4th Cir. 1970); Evans v. Cunningham, 335 F.2d 491, 493 (4th Cir. 1964).
In this case, the highest court of the State of North Carolina has, in the past year, spoken twice in unequivocal rejection of precisely the claim petitioner seeks to raise here. State v. Sparrow, 276 N.C. 499, 173 S.E.2d 897, 901-903 (1970); State v. Spencer, 276 N.C. 535, 173 S.E.2d 765, 770-773 (1970). The requirement of state remedy exhaustion does not compel petitioner to go through the empty formality of offering the Supreme Court of North Carolina an opportunity to reaffirm its already clearly established doctrine.
In view of the foregoing, we hold that the District Court erred when it granted respondent’s motion to dismiss Perry’s petition for failure- to exhaust state remedies. Accordingly, leave to proceed in forma pauperis is granted, a certificate of probable cause to appeal is granted, the judgment of the District Court is vacated and the case is remanded for further consideration of petitioner’s claim upon its merits. Inasmuch as the Supreme Court of the United States has heard argument in North Carolina v. Rice upon the same question as the petitioner raises in this case, the District Court is instructed to defer action until the Supreme Court has decided Rice.
Reversed and remanded.

Question: This question concerns the first listed appellant. The nature of this litigant falls into the category "natural person (excludes persons named in their official capacity or who appear because of a role in a private organization)". Which of these categories best describes the income of the litigant?

Choices:
not ascertained
poor + wards of state
presumed poor
presumed wealthy
clear indication of wealth in opinion
other - above poverty line but not clearly wealthy

Answer: 1