opinion: HASTINGS v. HUDSPETH.
  No. 2400.
  Circuit Court of Appeals, Tenth Circuit.
  Feb. 26, 1942.
  Andrew R. Hastings, pro se.
  Summerfield S. Alexander, U. S. Atty., and Homer Davis, Asst. U. S. Atty., both of Topeka, Kan., for appellee.
  Before PHILLIPS, BRATTON, and HUXMAN, Circuit Judges.
  PHILLIPS, Circuit Judge.
  This is an appeal from a judgment denying a petition for a writ of habeas corpus.
  Hastings, hereinafter referred to as the petitioner, was charged by an indictment returned December 12, 1939, in the District Court of the United States for the District of Nebraska, with a violation of 18 U.S.C. A. § 338. On June 4, 1940, at petitioner’s request, the court appointed John Berger, Esq., attorney for petitioner. Thereafter, on the same day, petitioner was arraigned and entered a plea of not guilty. On July 3, 1940, petitioner appeared in person and by his counsel and withdrew his plea of not guilty and entered a plea of guilty. On July 11, 1940, he was sentenced to a term of imprisonment of four years in an institution of the penitentiary type to be designated by the Attorney General. Commitment duly issued and petitioner was delivered into the custody of Hudspeth, Warden.
  The indictment charged that petitioner devised a scheme to defraud by obtaining money from one Joseph O’Rourke, of Omaha, Nebraska, South Omaha Savings Bank, Stock Yards National Bank of Omaha, and the Hibernia National Bank of New Orleans, Louisiana, and other persons and corporations to the grand jurors unknown, by inducing them to accept and pay money on forged checks by means of false and fraudulent pretenses and representations ; that petitioner planned and schemed that he would travel from place to place and defraud such persons and corporations as he could induce to cash or endorse false and forged checks drawn on banks situated in distant places; that he would represent to such persons and corporations to be defrauded that such checks were genuine, and upon receiving money thereon, in order to avoid apprehension and in order that he might continue the promotion of his scheme, would move on to another city before it could be ascertained that such checks were forged and false; that as a part of such scheme, petitioner planned and schemed that he would write a false and forged check drawn on the Hibernia National Bank of New Orleans, Louisiana; that he would, without authority, sign on the check a forged name as drawer; that he would represent to O’Rourke that the check was genuine and that he was the payee thereof, and induce O’Rourke to endorse the check and identify him as the payee thereof at some hank, and thereby cause the bank to advance money thereon; that in truth and in fact, there was no such drawer nor deposit; that on June 12, 1939, petitioner, for the purpose of executing such scheme, caused the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City, through its Omaha branch, to place and cause to be placed in the Post Office at Omaha, to be sent and delivered by the Post Office establishment to the addressee thereof, the above-mentioned check enclosed in an envelope with prepaid postage thereon, addressed to the Federal Reserve Bank, New Orleans, Louisiana.
  Petitioner contends that the indictment did not charge a federal offense, that the Federal Court for the Nebraska District did not have jurisdiction of the offense, and that the sentence was void.
  It is well settled that defects in an indictment, not going to the jurisdiction of the court which pronounced sentence, may not be raised on habeas corpus. Hence, on habeas corpus the question is not whether the indictment is vulnerable to direct attack by motion or demurrer, but whether it is so fatally defective as to deprive the court of jurisdiction.
  If there is a federal offense which the indictment apparently attempts to charge, and the court has jurisdiction over such offense and over the person of the accused, the sufficiency of the indictment is not open to challenge on habeas corpus.
  Here, the offense which the indictment attempted to charge is neither colorless nor an impossible one under the law. The trial court had jurisdiction over such offense and over the person of the petitioner. It was for it to determine the elements of the offense sought to be charged, the construction to be placed on the indictment, and its sufficiency. If it erred in determining those matters, its judgment was not for that reason void.
  We do not think the allegations of the indictment affirmatively show the continuing scheme was fully consummated when the money was paid over by the bank in Omaha or refute the specific allegations of the indictment that the mails were used to execute the scheme. Moreover, the scheme was a continuing one and contemplated the defrauding of a number of persons. The forwarding of the check for collection by mail from Nebraska to Louisiana effected a lapse of time during which the Omaha bank and O’Rourke were kept free from suspicion. This gave petitioner an opportunity to avoid detection and arrest and to perpetrate the scheme on others. The use of the mails, therefore, contributed to the execution of the scheme as against O’Rourke and the Omaha bank and aided in its subsequent execution against others.
  The allegation in the application for the writ that petitioner did not cause the check to be sent through the mails cannot stand against the affirmative allegation of the indictment to the contrary, which the petitioner admitted by his plea of guilty thereto.
  The judgment is affirmed.
  Creech v. Hudspeth, 10 Cir., 112 F. 2d 603, 605; Knight v. Hudspeth, 10 Cir., 112 F.2d 137, 139.
  Knight v. Hudspeth, 10 Cir., 112 F. 2d 137, 139; Creech v. Hudspeth, 10 Cir., 112 F.2d 603, 606.
  Creech v. Hudspeth, 10 Cir., 112 F. 2d 603, 606; Aderhold v. Hugart, 5 Cir., 67 F.2d 247; Goto v. Lane, 265 U. S. 393, 402, 44 S.Ct. 525, 68 L.Ed. 1070; Knewel v. Egan, 268 U.S. 442, 445, 446, 45 S.Ct. 522, 69 L.Ed. 1036.
  Creech v. Hudspeth, 10 Cir., 112 F. 2d 603, 606; Brady v. United States, 9 Cir., 26 F.2d 400, 401.
instruction: 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 "private business and its executives". 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.