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:
Armand R. THERRIEN, Plaintiff, Appellant, v. George R. VOSE, Jr., Defendant, Appellee.
No. 85-1332.
United States Court of Appeals, First Circuit.
Heard Oct. 10, 1985.
Decided Jan. 22, 1986.
William C. Madden, Boston, Mass., was on brief, for plaintiff, appellant.
Martin E. Levin, Asst. Atty. Gen., with whom Francis X. Bellotti, Atty. Gen., Boston, Mass., were on brief, for defendant, appellee.
Before BREYER and TORRUELLA, Circuit Judges, and HILL, Senior District Judge.
Of the Central District of California, sitting by designation.
TORRUELLA, Circuit Judge.
Armand Therrien appeals the district court’s denial of his petition for habeas corpus, 28 U.S.C. § 2254. In September, 1975, the appellant was tried before a jury in the Massachusetts Superior Court of Norfolk County for several counts of murder and assault arising from a single incident. He was convicted of murder in the first degree of United States Army Captain John Oi and police officer William Sheehan; of assault with intent to murder police officer Robert O’Donnell; of assault and battery with a dangerous weapon; and of unlawful possession of a weapon. Therrien was sentenced to two consecutive life terms on the murder charges and two five to ten year concurrent sentences on the assault charges. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the convictions in October 1976. Commonwealth v. Therrien, 371 Mass. 203, 355 N.E.2d 913 (1976). In September 1981, the Norfolk Superior Court denied Therrien’s motion for a new trial. Therrien’s application for a special appeal in cases involving first-degree murder convictions was denied, and the appeal was dismissed. A subsequent motion for post-conviction relief also proved unsuccessful. Commonwealth v. Therrien, SJC No. 82-253 Civil, Order Deying Application, August 11, 1982. At this point, Therrien had exhausted his state remedies.
Thereafter, Therrien filed a petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. The district court dismissed the petition but allowed a certificate of probable cause for this appeal on March 27, 1985. As grounds for his appeal, the petitioner alleges ineffective assistance of counsel; failure of the trial judge to ensure an impartial jury; prosecutorial misconduct; a faulty charge to the jury; and the unlawful imposition of consecutive life sentences.
During the nine-day jury trial, in which the defendant testified on his own behalf, two very different versions of the incidents leading to the defendant’s arrest emerged. The story told by police officer O’Donnell was as follows. O’Donnell testified that he and a fellow police officer, Sheehan, came across Captain John Oi’s car parked on the side of the road. Captain Oi was slumped over the steering wheel and Therrien was sitting beside him in the passenger’s seat. As the officers approached the car, Therrien emerged, saying something to the effect that his friend in the car was sick and that Therrien was going to drive him home. As O’Donnell neared the car, he saw that Oi’s face was bloodied. At that moment Therrien opened fire on the officers, killing Sheehan almost instantly and wounding O’Donnell. Despite his injury, O’Donnell managed to wrest Therrien’s gun from him, draw his own revolver, and shoot Therrien. A third police officer arrived and arrested Therrien.
Captain Oi was taken to a hospital where he died that evening from bullet wounds in the head inflicted by the defendant’s gun. It was also later discovered that O’Donnell had been hit by bullets from both Therrien’s and Sheehan’s weapons. A possible motive for the murder of Captain Oi was Therrien’s interest in an insurance policy on Oi’s life taken out in connection with a business venture entered into by Oi, Therrien, and two others.
Therrien’s version of the facts surrounding the episode stood in stark contrast to that of officer O’Donnell. He testified that, while Captain Oi was driving the car, Oi had lost his temper, beaten Therrien unconscious and taken his gun. When Therrien awoke he found himself lying next to the car. Therrien testified that the officers nearby were fighting and firing at each other, with O’Donnell presumably using Therrien’s gun which he had taken from Oi. O’Donnell and Therrien then wrestled, during which time Therrien’s gun went off while in O’Donnell’s hand. Then O’Donnell drew his own revolver and shot Therrien.
In this habeas action, Therrien sets forth several grounds for relief. First, he contends that he received ineffective assistance of counsel. The standard for ineffective assistance of counsel has been set out by the Supreme Court in Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984). The Court stated: “The benchmark for judging any claim of ineffectiveness must be whether counsel’s conduct so undermined the proper functioning of the adversarial process that the trial cannot be relied on as having produced a just result.” Id. at 2064. For a successful claim, the defendant must meet a two-pronged test, showing first that counsel’s performance was deficient, and second that the deficiency prejudiced the defense. Id. On careful review of the record, we cannot see that the petitioner/appellant has met either one of‘these requirements.
Therrien relies primarily on the following colloquy between his trial counsel, Alch, and the court, to prove that Alch was incompetent because he was not aware of his need to object to save issues for review:
Alch: Am I correct that it’s not necessary for me to make an exception in preserving the record?
The Court: I forget that we changed the rules, this is a murder trial so don’t worry about it if I make any mistakes. I will try not to.
Alch: I didn’t mean it that way.
End of Bench Conference.
In telling counsel “not to worry” because this was a murder trial, the court was referring to the fact that the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has the power to review the entire record in a capital case. M.G.L. c. 278, § 33E.
Therrien apparently wants this court to presume automatically that the trial process by which he was convicted was rife with reversible errors, objections to which should have been preserved for appellate review. He states that during trial his counsel “failed to point out specific violations that took place at trial.” The petitioner fails, however, to explain what “specific violations” did occur or how these supposed errors prejudiced his case. Similarly, Therrien claims ineffective assistance of counsel on appeal because: “In this case nothing was assigned as error or briefed that would reveal to the Supreme Judicial Court the errors of defense counsel at trial.” Again, the only specific problems that the petitioner cites are those that are already briefed separately and considered below.
We will not assume, simply as a matter of course, as Therrien would have us do, that serious errors were made during the trial process and that defense counsel failed to note them. On the contrary, we indulge a strong presumption that counsel’s conduct fell within the wide range of reasonable professional assistance. Perron v. Perrin, 742 F.2d 669, 673 (1st Cir. 1984) (citing Strickland v. Washington, 466 U.S. 668, 104 S.Ct. 2052, 2065-66, 80 L.Ed.2d 674 (1984)). With no showing by the petitioner of specific errors, nor any indication that errors, if existing at all, prejudiced the defense or affected the result, we reject the petitioner’s claim of ineffective assistance of counsel.
The petitioner next claims that the trial judge failed to ensure the selection of an impartial jury. This argument is based entirely on the trial court’s failure to pose the following three questions to prospective jurors:
#21 Will you give the testimony of a police officer more credence than that of other witnesses merely because he is a police officer?
# 60 Would you think a police officer has more credibility than a person who is not a police officer?
# 61 Would you give greater credence to the testimony of a law enforcement officer merely because he is such an officer?
In a case such as this, where the prosecution relies heavily upon the testimony of police officers, the trial judge must be cognizant of the risk that jurors might give more credence to witnesses called by the prosecution. In certain circumstances, the refusal of a judge to ask prospective jurors questions designed to weed out such bias may be reversible error. See United States v. Pappas, 639 F.2d 1, 4-5 (1st Cir. 1980), cert. denied, 451 U.S. 913, 101 S.Ct. 1988, 68 L.Ed.2d 304 (1981).
When a problem of potential juror bias arises, the trial judge has a great deal of latitude in determining how best to handle the voir dire. See Ristaino v. Ross, 424 U.S. 589, 594-95, 96 S.Ct. 1017, 1020, 47 L.Ed.2d 258 (1976). The Supreme Court has held that a defendant’s right to an impartial jury can be satisfied without the court’s inquiring into every specific prejudice feared by the defendant. Ristaino v. Ross, supra at 594-95, 96 S.Ct. at 1020; Ham v. South Carolina, 409 U.S. 524, 527-28, 93 S.Ct. 848, 850-51, 35 L.Ed.2d 46 (1973).
The record here indicates that the court took adequate measures to guard against jury bias favoring the police officer’s testimony. The judge emphasized to the jurors their responsibility in remaining objective and examining whether particular witnesses had any personal interest in testifying one way or another. Here, where police officer O’Donnell was himself allegedly a victim of the crime, they had to consider carefully the credibility of his story in light of his interaction with the defendant. The court also screened out jurors who had any relationship with anyone engaged in law enforcement. We conclude that the jury was properly instructed as to its role in weighing the witnesses’ testimony and there was no constitutional error in the judge’s failure to ask the precise questions requested.
The appellant also claims that the prosecutor improperly commented on the evidence and expressed his personal views on the case, thereby warranting reversal of the conviction. Although he argues the transcript is rife with examples of egregious prosecutorial conduct, the appellant cites in his brief only the single following statement from the prosecutor’s closing argument:
We have given you some evidence and we are not hanging our hat on that. We are not telling you that this is the only thing it could have been. What we are saying is we know he shot them.
The appellant argues that the statement “we know he shot them” is essentially unsworn testimony, not subject to cross-examination, that violates his due process rights. We cannot agree.
While a prosecutor may not manipulate or misrepresent evidence, see Donnelly v. de Christoforo, 416 U.S. 637, 646-48, 94 S.Ct. 1868, 1872-74, 40 L.Ed.2d 431 (1974), it is his responsibility to marshal the evidence in his closing argument in a manner that will prove the government’s case. Having reviewed the transcript, we find the prosecutor did not exceed the permissible bounds of advocacy for the state. At the outset of his argument, he specifically told the jury that it was their recollection of the evidence — and not his — that “counts.” The judge, too, admonished the jury that their understanding of the evidence was not to be governed by the recitation of the evidence presented by the trial attorneys. We find that, in the total context of the prosecutor’s remarks, none of the prosecutor’s statements would warrant the granting of a retrial. Cf. Salemme v. Ristaino, 587 F.2d 81 (1st Cir.1978); United States v. Rusmisel, 716 F.2d 301 (5th Cir.1983).
The appellant next claims that the jury charge was flawed in two respects. He contends that the instructions had the effeet of imposing a mandatory presumption of malice and establishing a presumption in favor of the commonwealth. In support of this, the appellant makes no further argument but simply cites the two cases of Mullaney v. Wilbur, 421 U.S. 684, 95 S.Ct. 1881, 44 L.Ed.2d 508 (1975) and Sandstrom v. Montana, 442 U.S. 510, 99 S.Ct. 2450, 61 L.Ed.2d 39 (1979). We can find no principles set forth in those cases that would run contrary to or cast doubt upon the constitutionality of the jury charge given here.
The court’s instruction regarding the inferences the jury might draw from the evidence are similar to the instruction on a permissive presumption that we approved in McInerney v. Berman, 621 F.2d 20 (1st Cir.), cert. denied, 449 U.S. 867, 101 S.Ct. 201, 66 L.Ed.2d 85 (1980). The charge on reasonable doubt also was proper, particularly in light of our holding in Grace v. Butterworth, 635 F.2d 1, 7 (1st Cir.1980), cert. denied, 452 U.S. 917, 101 S.Ct. 3053, 69 L.Ed.2d 421 (1981). We agree that the trial court’s instructions taken together with the curative remarks made at the request of defense counsel afforded Therrien all of the constitutional due process to which he was entitled. See Cupp v. Naughten, 414 U.S. 141, 147, 94 S.Ct. 396, 400, 38 L.Ed.2d 368 (1973); Gagne v. Meachum, 460 F.Supp. 1213, 1218-20 (D.Mass. 1978), aff'd, 606 F.2d 471 (1st Cir.1979), cert. denied, 444 U.S. 992,100 S.Ct. 524, 62 L.Ed.2d 422 (1980).
Finally, the appellant contends that the imposition of two consecutive life sentences violates the Constitution’s double jeopardy clause. U.S. Const., 5th amend., cl. 2. Therrien argues that, under the court’s instructions, the jury conceivably could have found that Therrien was guilty of the murder of Officer Sheehan based solely on their finding that he had committed the underlying felony of murdering Captain Oi. Hence, the argument runs, Therrien would be punished for the same illegal act twice.
We agree with the district court that this argument is wholly without merit. The murders of Officer Sheehan and Captain Oi were two distinct offenses. Each was required to be separately proved and independently supported by the prosecution’s evidence. In addition, the two offenses each carried their own penalties and the imposition of multiple sentences under these circumstances in no way violated the double jeopardy clause. See Whalen v. United States, 445 U.S. 684, 692, 100 S.Ct. 1432, 1438, 63 L.Ed.2d 715 (1980); Albernaz v. United States, 450 U.S. 333, 337, 101 S.Ct. 1137, 1141, 67 L.Ed.2d 275 (1981).
The decision of the district court to dismiss Therrien’s petition for a writ of habeas corpus is affirmed in all respects.
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