Others have reported a problem with Stuffit Expander version 10 causing this behavior. Evidently it installs a buggy contextual menu item. See:
http://www.macupdate.com/reviews.php?id=9248
On my system, I removed the file "StuffitCM.plugin" from the folder "/Library/Contextual Menu...
The problem exists for 10.4.3 as well. I just upgraded from 10.3.9 to 10.4.3 on a 15" Powerbook. The right-click or control-click for contextual menus in the Finder causes a Finder crash and restart. Right-click works in other places, including: dock items, Illustrator.