Are you a scumbag if you escape serving on a jury?

[Warik]

This has been bugging me for about a day.

I had jury duty yesterday. For those not familiar with how it works, you sit in a room with hundreds of other angry people and waste a day. You get called a few times to be interviewed by a judge and some lawyers for a particular case, then they decide if you're going to be on the jury. If you get picked, 2-3 more days of your life are gone forever. If you don't, you go back to the waiting room until they call you again.

If you don't get picked all day, you're off the hook for a year.

This was for civil court. I got called twice and effortlessly got dismissed (most assuredly by the defense) both times. Many other members of the potential jury had PERFECT opportunities to escape and did not seem to take advantage of them for some reason. Example: Both cases were related to auto insurance. The lawyers asked if anyone was insured by these people. Some people said yes. They were all asked if they would be biased one way or the other since they were insured by these people. Believe it or not, they ALL said "no I wouldn't be biased."

Well, I wasn't insured by the insurance companies, but when asked, I said that I was biased against insurance companies because I believe premiums are too high, especially for one in my age+gender+marital status group, and that I've had bad experiences with insurance agencies in the past and so I did not believe I could be a fair juror.

I don't feel like a scumbag because I got off (after all, I was completely truthful, not like I lied under oath or anything), but I do feel a bit guilty that it is my civic duty according to the Constitution and that I managed to escape.

So... am I (or are we) assholes if we can avoid having to serve on a jury with 100% certainty every single time, or are we fulfilling our civic duty and being upstanding citizens by SHOWING UP for potential jury selection, and it is not our fault that we don't get picked as long as we're perfectly honest?