I recompiled openssl with noasm flag now for sparcv9 (like I do on 32-bits compiles), and the example runs fine for me on the T1, proving Python is not to blame here.

That said, if your problem only occurs with 0.9.8 isn't it then likely that that version has some bug which is fixed in 1.0.0 series?
My gdb backtraces pointed at code inside libcrypto (one of the ASM accelerators).

I am using GCC and a minimum of host-provided libs though.

% python2.7 -V
Python 2.7.1 (r271:86832, Feb 14 2011, 12:37:15) 
[GCC 4.3.2] on sunos5
% file `which python2.7`
/scratch/tmp/gentoo/sparcv9/usr/bin/python2.7: ELF 64-bit MSB executable, SPARC V9, total store ordering, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked (uses shared libs), not stripped
% uname -a
SunOS build-t1000-sol10.cwi.nl 5.10 Generic_139555-08 sun4v sparc SUNW,SPARC-Enterprise-T1000 Solaris