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. Michael ALEXANDER, Defendant-Appellant.
No. 91-3113.
United States Court of Appeals, Sixth Circuit.
Argued Sept. 30, 1991.
Decided Nov. 4, 1991.
Joseph P. Schmitz, Asst. U.S. Atty., Cleveland, Ohio (argued and briefed), for plaintiff-appellee.
Richard A. Damiani, Cleveland, Ohio (argued and briefed), for defendant-appellant.
Before KENNEDY and SUHRHEINRICH, Circuit Judges, and ENGEL, Senior Circuit Judge.
PER CURIAM.
Defendant-appellant Michael Alexander appeals from the District Court’s denial of his motion to vacate his guilty plea and to reopen a previously conducted suppression hearing. For the reasons stated below, we AFFIRM the District Court’s orders.
I.
On January 8, 1990, defendant Michael Alexander was indicted for possession of cocaine with intent to distribute, in violation of 21 U.S.C. § 841(a)(1). On May 10 and 11, 1990, the court below conducted an evidentiary hearing to entertain Alexander’s nineteen-page motion to suppress certain evidence. At the hearing, Alexander’s team of attorneys presented evidence that included witness testimony. On June 21, 1990, the court entered its Memorandum and Order granting Alexander’s motion in part, and denying it in part.
On July 19, 1990, Alexander entered a conditional guilty plea, reserving under Rule 11(a)(2), Fed.R.Crim.P., the right to appeal the partial denial of his motion to suppress. After granting Alexander several continuances, the court finally scheduled sentencing for December 11, 1990. Four days before sentence was to be imposed, Alexander filed a motion to vacate his plea of almost five months earlier, and to reopen the suppression hearing concluded seven months earlier. In a memorandum in support of the motion, Alexander stated only the names of two additional witnesses who, although available to have testified at the original hearing on the motion to suppress, were not called to do so. Alexander offered little indication as to the expected testimony of the prospective witnesses, its prospective relevance, or the presence of any mitigating factors justifying their sudden appearance at the last minute. He merely stated that they would “verify” Alexander’s testimony. The District Court denied the motion and proceeded to sentence Alexander. This appeal of the denial of the motion followed.
II.
Under Fed.R.Crim.P. 32(d), a court “may permit withdrawal of [a] plea upon a showing by the defendant of any fair and just reason.” Granting of a withdrawal is a matter left to the discretion of the District Court, and we will reverse only for an abuse of that discretion. United States v. Stephens, 906 F.2d 251, 252 (6th Cir.1990). The appellant has the burden of proving that the withdrawal would be justified. Id.
We strongly prefer that district courts state their reasons for decisions left to their discretion, such as this one, rather than simply making marginal entries as was done here. As we have noted often, “[i]n order to review a discretionary decision, some understanding of the trial court’s reasons is necessary.” Morscott, Inc. v. Cleveland, 936 F.2d 271, 272 (6th Cir.1991) (quoting Israel v. Barberton, 936 F.2d 573 (6th Cir.1991)). However, on the face of the record before us, it is clear that it was not an abuse of discretion to deny Alexander’s motion to vacate the plea of guilty and reopen the suppression hearing.
Although the federal rules do not establish criteria for determining whether a defendant’s proferred reasons for vacating his plea are “fair and just,” the Notes of (the) Advisory Committee on Rules, Federal Criminal Code and Rules (West 1987), relative to the 1983 amendment to Rule 32(d), do provide guidelines for the standard set forth. United States v. Spencer, 836 F.2d 236, 238 (6th Cir.1987). These include the amount of time that elapsed between the plea and the motion to vacate, the presence (or absence) of a valid reason for the failure to present the grounds for withdrawal at an earlier point in the proceedings, and whether the movant has asserted his legal innocence. Id. at 238-39.
Applying this analysis to the present case, we conclude that it was not an abuse of discretion for the District Court not to credit Alexander with having offered “fair and just” reasons to vacate his plea. His motion to vacate was filed some five months after his plea was entered. Courts have noted that the aim of the rule is to allow a hastily entered plea made with unsure heart and confused mind to be undone, not to allow a defendant “to make a tactical decision to enter a plea, wait several weeks, and then obtain a withdrawal if he believes that he made a bad choice in pleading guilty.” United States v. Carr, 740 F.2d 339, 345 (5th Cir.1984), cert. denied, 471 U.S. 1004, 105 S.Ct. 1865, 85 L.Ed.2d 159 (1985). For these reasons, courts have denied motions to vacate entered after any substantial time has passed after the entry of the plea. See, e.g., Carr, 740 F.2d 339 (22 days); Spencer, 836 F.2d 236 (five weeks). Alexander’s delay of almost five months is certainly beyond the bounds of the time frame ordinarily considered appropriate for motions to vacate.
Alexander’s complete failure to offer any reasons for neglecting to raise the grounds for vacating the plea at some earlier point in the proceedings reinforces this analysis. The witnesses he wishes to present at a reopened suppression hearing were available at the time of the first hearing. They were known to his team of attorneys at that point. Alexander has failed to articulate any reason for not calling them then, other than a tactical decision, nor has he advanced any particularized reason to call them now. In fact, he has not even indicated, by way of affidavits or otherwise, the anticipated nature of their testimony, beyond the reinforcement in some unspecified manner of his own testimony at the earlier hearing. This clearly does not constitute a fair and just reason for vacating a plea.
The remaining considerations utilized by other courts in determining whether a fair and just reason has been advanced similarly mitigate against Alexander. Courts have taken into account the absence of a defendant’s vigorous and repeated protestations of innocence, United States v. Soft, 558 F.2d 1073 (2d Cir.1977), a defendant’s lack of innocence or naivete with respect to the criminal justice system, United States v. Usher, 703 F.2d 956 (6th Cir.1983), and finally the potential prejudice to the government should the plea be withdrawn. The prejudice to the government need not be established or considered unless and until the defendant has established a fair and just reason for vacating his plea. This he has not done.
Since we affirm the denial of his motion to vacate, the motion to reopen the suppression hearing is moot. It should be noted, moreover, that the grounds for reopening the hearing are exactly those offered for vacating the plea, namely the mere identification of two witnesses who may testify, to unknown effect.
For the foregoing reasons, we AFFIRM the District Court in its denial of Alexander’s motion to vacate his guilty plea and to reopen the suppression hearing. The judgment of the District Court is also AFFIRMED.

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