Given a sufficient budget and time, I think this could be made to work, on a clear day. How? Nitrogen lasers in low earth orbit target the upper end of the atmosphere in a volume over the target as the satellite approaches the target then at azimuth fire a larger pulse directly at the target, ionizing a channel all the way from the top of exosphere to ground, grounding the collected charge from the now conductive volume, to the target.

I guess that would be pretty useless, because you would have to catch your target in open field, during the thunderstorm, which is highly unlikely, since most people hide from it. Targeting a car could be solution, but even then, if the victim has their seat belts on they would probably survive the crash.