in reply to bizarre error "panic" with Devel::DProf

It is actually not that bizarre. If you look under the BUGS section of Devel::DProf, you'll find that author has listed a warning that if a subroutine "exits with a goto(LABEL), last(LABEL), or next(LABEL) then perl may crash or Devel::DProf may die with the error" that you got.