I'm sorry to avoid answering your real question but if you've been away from this stuff for awhile you should look at DBIx::Class instead. I was an early adopter and frequent user of Class::DBI (CDBI) and have moved entirely to DBIx::Class (DBIC). It's a better ORM framework on many levels (speed, extensibility, code generation, and more).

Unlikely but possible solution to your current problem: update your DBD::SQLite. It's had several rounds of updates and bug fixes in the last few months.