Why is that? Because the Govt doesn’t want ordinary people to have the power to indict them and their friends, they reserve that to the DA’s who are elected and wield enough power to indict a ham sandwich if they care to or let a bloody murderer with 100 witnesses go free...
Ordinary people sit on Grand Juries. When a citizen is called for “jury duty,” they might end up on a local, county, state or federal Grand Jury or on a trial jury.
A little info on Grand Juries from Wikipedia
Federal level
Charges involving “capital or infamous crimes” under federal jurisdiction must be presented to a grand jury under the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution. This has been interpreted to allow the grand jury to be bypassed for misdemeanor offenses, which can instead be charged by prosecutor’s information. Some plea agreements also stipulate that the defendant waives prosecution by indictment. However, the defendant must make this waiver in open court and after being advised of the nature of the charge and of the defendant’s rights. The U.S. Attorneys Manual states that prosecutors “must recognize that the grand jury is an independent body, whose functions include not only the investigation of crime and the initiation of criminal prosecution but also the protection of the citizenry from unfounded criminal charges.” It is not altogether uncommon for subjects or targets of the grand jury’s investigation, particularly in white-collar cases, to request or demand the opportunity to tell the grand jury their side of the story. However, the prosecutor has no legal obligation to permit such witnesses to testify, though the Manual warns that a refusal to do so can create the appearance of unfairness. The Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure prescribe that a grand jury must have from sixteen to twenty-three members and that an indictment may issue only if at least 12 jurors concur.
For members of the United States armed forces, an Article 32 hearing is used for a similar purpose.
State level
Unlike many other provisions of the Bill of Rights, the Supreme Court has ruled that this requirement was not incorporated to apply to state courts via the Fourteenth Amendment, and states therefore may elect not to use grand juries.
County level
In the U.S., the states of Arizona, California, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New York, Nevada, North Carolina, and Oregon have grand juries at the county level.
In California, each county is required by the state constitution to have at least one grand jury impaneled at all times. Grand juries are governed by Title 4 of the California Penal Code, as well as other more general provisions. In addition, grand juries are not subject to the Brown Act.
Most grand juries are seated on a fiscal cycle, i.e. July through June. Most counties have panels consisting of nineteen jurors, some have as few as eleven jurors, others have as many as twenty-three. All actions by a grand jury require a two-thirds vote. Jurors are usually selected on a volunteer basis.
These county-level grand juries primarily focus on oversight of government institutions at the county level or lower. Almost any entity that receives public money can be examined by the grand jury, including county government, cities, and special districts. Each panel selects the topics that it wishes to examine each year. A jury is not allowed to continue an oversight from a previous panel. If a jury wishes to look at a subject that a prior jury was examining, it must start its own investigation and independently verify all information. It may use information obtained from the prior jury but this information must be verified before it can be used by the current jury. Upon completing its investigation, the jury may, but is not required to, issue a report detailing its findings and recommendations.
The grand jury is required to publish a minimum of one report containing a minimum of one finding and one recommendation. The published reports are the only public record of the grand jury’s work; there is no minority report. Each published report includes a list of those public entities that are required or requested to respond. The format of these responses is dictated by California Penal Code Section 933.05, as is the time span in which they must respond.
County grand juries develop areas to examine by two avenues: juror interests, and public complaints. Complaints filed by the public are kept confidential. The protection of whistleblowers is one of the primary reasons for the confidential nature of the grand jury’s work.
Most county grand juries in California do not consider criminal matters, though by law they are able to. The decision of whether or not to present criminal cases to the grand jury is made by the county District Attorney.
Hennepin County, Minnesota (which contains Minneapolis) keeps a grand jury impaneled at all times. Each grand jury serves a term of four months, typically meets one day each week, and focuses almost exclusively on homicide cases.
Circuit grand juries in Kentucky
In Kentucky, grand jurors are empaneled in each county, at the Circuit level (felonies only) for a four-month term (three panels per year). During the trial jury orientation for the given four-month term, the grand jurors are selected from the trial jury pool, although the method of selection is not necessarily random. The meetings are twice a month (however, grand juries in more populous counties generally meet more often), with each meeting usually going through 20-30 cases in a four to five hour period. The indictment rate is about 98-99%; the grand jury can broaden (about 1% of the time) or narrow (about 3% of the time) the counts in the indictment as well. Usually, fifteen or so[clarification needed] grand jurors are required to report to meetings; the hope is that twelve will show to each meeting, which is the number of jurors required to hear cases (extra jurors can leave). It takes nine yes votes to the question of probable cause to sign a true bill of indictment. Fewer than nine yes votes either causes a no true bill or a narrowing of the indictment (depending on the votes per count).
The rules are very similar to the federal process; the grand jury only hears from law enforcement personnel, with the exception of property crimes, where store detectives or actual victims of theft or vandalism are called to testify. The only cases brought to the grand jury are those initiated from the Commonwealth’s Attorney’s office (the prosecutor for felonies). For the vast majority of cases, the grand jurors generally only hear a recitation of facts from the police report, crime laboratory reports, and other documentation generated during the evidence gathering process. Grand jurors can ask factual questions of the witnesses and legal questions of the prosecutors. The ability to broaden or narrow indictments does technically allow for grand juries to open new avenues of investigation, although since it is dependent on prosecutors for facts, this seems very rarely done, if ever. Rules of confidentiality apply to grand jurors, which are similar to the federal rules.