As you suspect, it is your (My)SQL syntax and not Perl/DBI at fault here, and can be fixed by removing the second WHERE in your statement because (in simple queries, anyway) you're only allowed one WHERE clause.

Something else you might want to do is investigate the use of placeholders (example below), which will automatically quote your variables so they don't break your SQL (ie, if you searched for O'Reilly, you'd have an extra apostophe in your statement!).

$sql = "
  SELECT * 
  FROM   dataflex 
  WHERE  attorney = ?
    AND  issue    = ?
";

$sth = $dbh->prepare($sql) 
   or die "preparing: ", $dbh->errstr;

$sth->execute($INPUT{'attorney'},$INPUT{'issue'})
   or die "executing: ", $dbh->errstr;
[download]

Note also the use of die instead of print, so that the script finishes after the first error instead of generating an endless stream of them, potentially confusing things...

    --k.