Problems with Punctuation in Title using ElementCriteriaModel
I've tested your code with a similar query in a local database and am getting the results you'd expect. So the code seems accurate. Aside from environmental variables that may be at play, the only part of the example code above that I see a potential issue with the line:

$criteria-&gt;section = 'entryHandle'; 


It's unclear what you may mean by entryHandle.  This value should be the sectionHandle. If entryHandle means slug, then the $criteria-&gt;section may need to get updated to be $criteria-&gt;slug = 'entryHandle';