As they approached his front door carrying boxes of oranges and wine, presumably to bribe him, Magistrate Pearce came outside and yelled, “Please get off my property”.

Then there was the time police patrolled his street after the 72-year-old was wrongly named as the magistrate who granted bail to murderous Lindt Café madman Man Monis.

“My son rang me from Melbourne (after hearing Derryn Hinch on the radio) and he said, ‘Dad, did you do that case and release that fellow?’ I said, ‘I don’t know – I’m in that many courts, I could have!’”

But then the threats came and he decided to take a few days leave to deal with the “enormous stress”.

Despite many similar out of court dramas, Magistrate Peace says it has been an “absolute privilege” to preside over more than 350,0000 cases during his tenure as the state’s longest serving judicial officer.

In his 36-year career as a magistrate he has dealt with everything from driving matters, murders and domestic violence to prized poodle assaults and stolen corpses.

“It’s an enormous privilege to sit in judgment of your fellow human beings,” he told The Saturday Telegraph.

“To me it is a great pleasure to have been a magistrate for so many years – I can’t think of any other occupation where you have such an involvement in people’s lives.”

This week the Glen Innes-born magistrate hung up his robes for the final time at Liverpool Local Court having first started on the bench in 1981.

Magistrate Pearce has sat in each one of state’s 150 local courts and remembers giving marathon swimmer Susie Maroney a bond for drink-driving, letting killer Roger Rogerson off a speeding ticket and refusing bail for farmer Ian Turnbull who was later found guilty of murdering an environment officer.

He has been the state’s relieving magistrate for 20 years and has clocked up more than 500,000 kilometres driving to courts from Wollongong to Wilcannia.

Although it was a struggle to pick cases that stuck in his mind, he remembered being greatly affected by a case where a man had dressed his stepson in girl’s clothing and beaten him to death with a hammer at Nowra.

“That was a horrific case and that affected me to see what human beings can do to little children.”

Sifting through piles of child pornography had at times made him physically sick.

“Generally paedophile or child pornography cases are the worst. I’ve been sick a couple of times when I’ve had to look at little children being abused.”

Then there are some stranger than fiction cases like the time a man named Ian Ferguson stole his mother’s corpse from Wollongong Hospital because he said his mother wanted to be “buried at sea”.

Talking to The Saturday Telegraph moments before he stepped into a Liverpool court room for the final time on Tuesday, he chuckled as he remembered a woman who had sued an Army officer because his mutt had broken into her house and ravaged her prized poodles.

“She sued for damages to her couch, the food that was taken by the dog, pain and suffering of these two little dogs and as well as the intrusion to her two little poodles,” he said.

As he sat next to his wife Audette in a crowded coffee shop this week, he lowered his voice as he spoke about how his brother and popular teacher Wayne Pearce was murdered by a young woman in 1993.

Mr Pearce died after he was stabbed by the 17-year-old in a taxi he drove part-time in Orange.

Magistrate Pearce is known for his heavy handed sentencing, an approach perhaps adopted knowing first-hand the devastating impact crimes have on victims.

“There are a lot of victims who never had a choice as to who was to be chosen to be the target of misbehaviour and the impact on their lives is often devastating,” he said.

Some reactions to his sentences have been extreme – including the time a grandmother who was jailed for drink-driving tried to kill herself by sculling a bottle of weed killer at Gosford and the time a woman stabbed herself three times in the stomach in a Coffs Harbour courtroom.

Another time a woman he had sentenced to six months’ jail, jumped out of the dock and ran out of Raymond Terrace Local Court and onto the Pacific Highway.

Magistrate Pearce described his job as a lonely occupation and said he’d walked many a country street before dawn trying to come up with the right decision.

“To be honest with you, you don’t get any reinforcement – no one every looks to you and says thank you, you are pretty much on your own,” he said.

“In Griffith I used to look out the window of my chambers and you’d see a whole bevy of lawyers and you’d think , ‘Oh god, I’ve got to face all this – what are they talking about? What are they going to put to me.”

He continued: “ So you walk into the court you have no idea what they are going to do – it’s very nerve-wracking but you have to sit there calmly and take each case and each issue as it comes up and try and be very calm as you go through it and hope that you are right.”

The talented pianist admits he is serious and does not have a “soft persona” in court but that was not to say he was not affected by what he saw and decisions he made.

He felt “awful” when he learned a man he had sentenced for habitual driving offences was killed in prison and similarly when another man he had jailed over a fatal crash was left with severe brain injuries after he was bashed by an inmate.

“Every day people are going to jail and if they get bashed you can’t blame the judges,” he said.

“You’re not there as some social engineer to bring your own ideas about life but to apply the law as it is given to you by parliament and as decided by higher courts.”

As he poses for a photographer outside the courthouse, wife Audette explains he does have a softer side – like the time he poked holes in the backyard and told his grandchildren that was where Santa’s reindeer had landed.

In his retirement Magistrate Pearce hopes to travel, spend more time with his five children and 11 grandchildren, tinker more on the piano, play more golf and get more involved with his local Rotary club.

But criminals have not seen the last of him yet – he will be back on the bench in January in an acting position.